"You can feel the holidays are coming," bankers who provide services to clients in the major shopping centres rejoicingly say, even though the long hours at this time of the year keep them away from the cake and hot wine that await them at home.
Given last year's success story, merchants decided to keep stores open for much longer than the usual hours again, while banks are trying to do the same even though they cannot keep up until the end.
For all sorts of stores, December is that month with sales way above the annual average, almost double in the case of some product categories. Such doubling or even tripling is registered for the banking operations, as well, starting from overworked ATMs and foreign currency transfers from abroad.
"ATMs see twice larger cash requests these days. Our main ATM would normally dispense some 6-7bn ROL a week. Now we have to feed three billion into it every other day to be able to cope with the cash withdrawal demand," Dragos Popeanga, the head of the BRD's Carrefour Orhideea office told Ziarul Financiar.
He says that the largest transactions are naturally done with cash - pay desk operations, currency exchange or deposits for card accounts.
"You can feel the activity speeding up especially of late. We extended our business hours for two more hours since the beginning of the month from 9.00 a.m. to 10 p.m. The demand for loans is a little higher; however, what's truly spectacular is the increase in the money transfers via Western Union: from an average of 50 transactions a day we jumped to more than 1,000, with values ranging from 400-500 euros or dollars," Popeanga explains.
The BRD offices in Carrefour Militari, Orhideea and Brasov will be open between 9.00 a.m. to 5 p.m. today. On Sunday December 26, they will be open between 9 a.m. - 10 p.m. (Bucharest) and 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Brasov). All offices will be open from 9 to 4 on December 31.
Raiffeisen Bank, the third leading retail bank on the market, in its turn is taking full advantage of the season's shopping frenzy experienced by the major shopping complexes.
"We are seeing our operations at the foreign currency exchange machine triple at this time of the year compared with the other months, reaching some 20,000 euros in one day. Whereas people were rather distrusting at the beginning, the clients have started looking for it because they've seen how simple it is to work with it. Furthermore, the machine is operational even outside the opening hours of our office," Razvan Turliu, the head of the Raiffeisen Bank office at the Cora shopping complex told Ziarul Financiar.
He says forecasts about consumer loan applications have already been exceeded, as both the number and the value of the applications have doubled. At the same time, the volume of payments made by legal entity clients, to the state budget inclusive, has substantially increased.
The Raiffeisen office inside Cora is open until 6 today, and will be open from 9 to 11 as of Monday. At the same time, the bank's office inside Carrefour Colentina will be open until 11 p.m. next week, as will those inside the Selgros stores. According to the deal with Selgros, Raiffeisen stays open until 7 p.m. today.
razvan.voican@zf.ro ; ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro
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