Bankers follow their clients into malls

A series of banks with aggressive retail expansion plans, such as BCR and Alpha Bank, are relying heavily on branches opened in shopping centres, with some malls including as many as six or seven bank branches. Among the malls accommodating such bank “networks” are Polus Center in Cluj, with seven branches, City Mall in the South of the capital, with six branches, and Iulius Mall in Timisoara, where five banks have offices opened and where ten ATMs are set up, in order to take advantage of the mall visitors’ appetite for consumption. “The expansion of investments in hypermarkets and malls in areas with a particularly dense population created a very big potential for banking activities, generated by the growing needs of many buyers who use the services of economic operators present in these shopping centres,” said BCR representatives, with the bank having branches both in City Mall, Iulius Mall Timisoara and in Polus Center Cluj.