Romania's BCR records 20% growth in phone banking, expects further increase in 2013

Romanian lender Banca Comercială Romana (BCR) recorded over 1.3 million operations in the Contact Center via telephone and e-mail, up 25 percent compared to the previous year. BCR expects the number of operations to continue the upward trend in 2013, mainly because “during the first two months, more requests have been received compared to the same period of the year 2012,” reads a statement from the bank. The transactions carried out by the BCR clients, users of Alo 24 Banking service, also recorded a year-on-year growth of 20 percent in 2012, to some EUR 84 million. According to BCR, this increase was another positive impact of the bank’s new account packages. The lender is currently offering three versions of current account packages, namely ClasiCont BCR, ExtraCont BCR and TotalCont BCR. Besides the trading and remote trading support, BCR’s Contact Center also provides customer services and sales (InfoBCR). “From the moment of launching the new current account packages in the bank’s offer, there has been a four-fold increase in the number of clients interested in the offered facilities, for which the InfoBCR advisors set appointments for clients to purchase products at the branches they prefer,” according to BCR. BCR, member of Austrian Erste Group, is currently the largest lender in Romania by assets - over EUR 16 billion. The bank posted a net loss of EUR 277 million last year, when its provisions went up by 68 percent, to some EUR 813 million. The loss is a first for BCR, which has only posted partial losses so far, never a year-long loss. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com (photo source: Erste Group)