6 minute read
WE MOVE BORDERS
CORPORATE
CLAUDIO CESARIO
Advertisement
General Manager and Vice Chairman of Managing Board of Zagrebačka banka WE MOVE BORDERS
As part of the UniCredit Group, Zagrebačka banka offers both local expertise and international reach. When our clients decide to internationalize and enlarge their business in different markets, they can count on a number of options at their disposal
Along with the growing optimism in CEE and Croatia, in particular, as well as the improvement in lending trends in corporate sector and among consumers, Zagrebačka banka is ready to offer new types of investments to its clients.
Can you give us an overview of the banking sector in Central and Eastern Europe and in particular, in Croatia? — The banking sector across the entire CEE is in a more stable and sustaina ble position compared to past years, in terms of the lending dynamic but also funding and credit quality.
In 2017, lending activity in Croatia accelerated in the private sector, first in corporate segment and, later, in the household one. By the end of last year, volumes in the aforementioned segments increased despite the large bad assets sales volumes concluded throughout the year.
According to UniCredit Outlook, we expect that - in 2018 - lending in CEE will be in line with deposits' growth for the first time in almost a decade, providing there is some optimism in terms of shift ing the economic region's attitude from savings to investment. The data on de posits support this, showing a peak in growth in 2017, which is now expected to start declining.
In line with the favourable economic trends, we expect to see faster lending growth in Croatia’s private sector. Funding conditions for customers are continuously improving, thus helping restoring demand for investment and consumer loans. We also notice the gov ernment’s efforts in improving the business and investment climate.
The signs of those improvements are visible in the 2018 Economic Senti ment Index in Croatia (released by the European Commission) that is close to its historical maximum, despite all the challenges Croatia still faces.
Considering this environment, what is Zagrebačka banka’s strategy? — Zagrebačka banka is part of UniCredit Group, a simple, successful Pan European Commercial Bank, with a fully plugged in CIB, delivering a unique Western, Central and Eastern European network to its extensive client franchise.
Being part of UniCredit’s internation al network enables a simplified implementation of financial transactions and high flexibility.
Internationalisation and access to foreign markets are one of Group strengths. On one side, we have local expertise while, on the other, interna
tional reach.
To our clients we offer advisory support and a wide range of products and services in line with the pillars of our Core Client Offer: corporate banking and transaction services, structured finance, capital markets, investment products and international business.
In which way does Zagrebačka banka support entrepreneurs that would like to invest abroad or foreign ones investing in Croatia? — Zagrebačka banka is the largest bank in Croatia and the only one with a ded icated service model for international clients. Thanks to our team of top experts, we provide support when choosing banking products and servic es, tailor-made to individual needs from the opening of a transaction account to more complex structured financial solutions.
Our teams - located in three regions and having local presence in Zagreb, Split, Osijek, Rijeka, Varaždin and Poreč - are well-equipped to provide corpo rate finance advisory services related to mergers and acquisitions, capital structure or business strategies, capital markets advisory, as well as offering equity and debt financial instruments.
In interbank business, we rely on the correspondent network which includes leading banks around the world while we utilize a very powerful infrastructure.
Which is Zagrebačka banka Unique Selling Proposition for corporate cus tomers? — When our clients decide to internationalize and enlarge their business in different markets, they can count on a number of options at their disposal in UniCredit.
In particular, Investment Banking and Markets offer a broad range of spe cialized services. Whether they decide to carry out an M&A, a Joint Venture or their strategy forseen an organic growth in new markets, we always have tai lor-made solutions for our clients.
Additionally, we are continuously engaged in on boarding mid-sized cor porate clients in ELITE & UniCredit CEE Lounge. The Programme – supported by London Stock Exchange and Borsa Ital iana - aims to help SMEs with embarking on the next stage of growth by increasing awareness of capital markets and diverse funding options, while also granting them direct access to interna tional investors.
How is Zagrebačka banka coping with digital disruption? How much are cus tomers, both retail and corporate, inclined to use e-banking and m-banking solutions? — Our digital journey is ongoing as we continue to develop and cover more in itiatives reaching an increasing number of clients. Zagrebačka banka has the leading position in terms of market share in loans and deposits in the Retail and SME segments, which is the ideal environment to push digital banking forward.
In Zagrebačka banka, we invest in digitalisation and modernisation of the sales network and distribution chan nels in order to increase the availability of products and services for our customers.
Corporate clients recognize the ad vantages of digital channels and, as a result, we have a high percentage of e-banking users among corporate clients.
EXPECTATIONS
As far as Retail is concerned, account opening for new clients is now simple and fast as it can be done via a mobile phone. Clients recognise the advantag es of digital channels; we have 550,000 online banking users and 360,000 mobile banking users, which represents an annual increase of 9%. The transac tions executed through digital channels have been growing continuously, with mobile banking at the forefront the number of financial transactions in creased by 42% on a yearly basis.
How much are customers open to new banking features such as investments in open mutual funds? What type of investors you intend to attract? — If you look at the profile of our clients, you will notice that they are rather con servative. Main reason for that is a steady financial literacy along with years of financial instability in the region and high interest rates on bank deposits in the last 20 years.
When they had to choose among different forms of saving, conserva tive clients would choose the safest one for them which is the classical bank deposit with low risk and good fixed in terest rate.
Things have been changing in the last few years but the classical bank deposit is the foundation of the personal portfo lio of each client. However, the key term here is a portfolio.
We intend to attract classical inves tors who would like to allocate funds in different assets classes (deposits, mutual funds, real estate etc.). With in vesting in mutual funds and long-term investment strategy, they intend to earn higher potential return and decrease po tential risk that they would have with other classes of assets like hand picking stocks on their own.
If we look at the mutual funds market in Croatia, the total AuM has been con stantly rising in the last few years so our conservative clients are transforming into more open-minded ones.
Apart from corporate clients, your private banking clients have the op portunity to invest into international funds too. — Zagrebačka banka’s private banking clients have the opportunity to invest through the so-called Open Architecture concept, which means offering clients both proprietary and external products and services. This is characteristic for developed markets.
These investment funds run by the UniCredit Group's Preferred Partners structure are carefully selected based on their performance beeing close to the global investment strategy of Uni Credit Group.
Guided by one of the Five Group Fun damentals (Customers first), we aim fully support the client's need to enjoy all global opportunities in the best possible way.
