BRD: Huge mortgage lending potential

The banking market still has plenty of room for growth, in particular on the segment of mortgage lending, which can absorb new players, believes Petre Bunescu, deputy general manager of BRD-SocGen. “We are seeing a period of stagnation in consumer lending, but the potential of mortgage lending is huge, considering it is still at a very low level,” Bunescu told ZF. He also admitted BRD had tapped into the mortgage lending market relatively late. At the beginning of the summer, the second largest bank on the Romanian market launched its campaign with full force, promoting the improved lending terms it was able to offer as a result of the NBR’s approval of the bank’s own lending norms for individual customers. Bunescu says that the domestic banking market still offers big opportunities, even for a new player like Millennium. “Considering they participated in the race for the privatisation of BCR, I believe the Portuguese have collected enough information on the market and carefully evaluated the risks an investment from scratch entails in this sector.” Less optimistic than Bunescu, Mihai Bogza, Bancpost chairman, believes that in a few years from now a series of banks that were late in adopting growth strategies on the Romanian market will be forced to admit that they cannot operate efficiently.