BRD not interested in selling through brokers

All the banks on the market should publish their financial results on a half-year basis, for instance, following the same format set together with the NBR and in line with domestic accounting standards, states Sorin Popa, deputy general manager of BRD.

“(…) This way, customers would see who they are dealing with. I believe enough surprises would appear at the moment all published their figures in the same format,” says Popa. In early 2007, the NBR attempted to publish the ranking of banks by assets reported domestically, but gave up in the wake of some banks’ protests. In the absence of some official data published by the NBR, the image of banks’ performances remains relative. At the same time, Popa maintains that banks charging low interest rates for loans only in the first few months or year are deceiving their customers. “Our principle is that customers need to know from the very beginning how much they will have to pay back, to have visibility over the effort of loan reimbursement until maturity. We’ll calculate the indebtedness degree correctly because it’s fair”. Sorin Popa states a 65% indebtedness degree is “relatively high”. He admits BRD also “had to react to market competition” through various lending forms, but maintains the bank has been “highly cautious and consistent”. “For instance, on the real estate segment, we have a much smaller market share than we have on other products for the very reason that we’ve had a cautious policy (…)”. At the same time, Popa states BRD does not work with credit brokers. “We’ve done this only marginally as this is not part of our policy. Having such a large network, we don’t even need to, but at any rate we’re not interested. We have alternative distribution channels and there’s no way for us to outsource an as sensitive area as lending is. Brokers are only interested in gains (…)”. Popa adds BRD’s territorial network is getting close to 900 branches, despite the significantly slower expansion pace compared with previous years. BCR, the biggest bank in the system in terms of assets, has reached 600 branches. As it does not work with brokers, Popa maintains BRD is not experiencing with an increasing weight of bad loans.