Raiffeisen Banca pentru Locuinte (Raiffeisen Housing Bank), the first financial institution to specialise in mobilising sources of financing for buying, building and improving homes found 2,373 clients during its first month in business, with whom it concluded savings-lending contracts worth 364bn ROL (about 9 million euros).
The secret of the high number of contracts concluded during this first month can be attributed to the bank's sales team, largely made up of former insurance agents. This allowed them to approach clients before the product was launched, even before the bank became operational.
One of the recruitment conditions in order to join the sales team was to have a portfolio of at least 100 potential clients.
The sales of these services, however, will be backed by Raiffeisen Bank's branch network.
Raiffeisen Banca pentru Locuinte, whose shareholders are Raiffeisen Bank Romania, Bausparkasse Schwaebisch Hall Germany and Raiffeisen Bausparkasse Austria, obtained its operating licence from the National Bank of Romania (NBR) on June 2, 2004.
The average contract signed with this bank is worth 151 million ROL, which is actually the amount a client is supposed to save until the due date, together with the contribution of the bank and the state-granted bonus. The minimum contract stands at 30 million ROL, while the maximum contractual value has gone as high as 1bn ROL.
"Considering that the level of savings with banks remains rather low, the bank's initial results, just one month from the launch of our product, confirm our expectations of the domestic housing market's potential. The results are all the more encouraging when it is considered that this is a totally new product for the Romanian market," said Ionut Costea, Raiffeisen Banca pentru Locuinte (RBL) president.
The number of contracts concluded is particularly encouraging in light of the findings of a recent survey that said households would continue to have a very low appetite for savings, as long as they continued to prefer consumption on credit, which uses cash that could have been saved.
razvan.voican@zf.ro
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