Mucibabici, Deloitte: Banking services are still primitive. There's potential for completely online platforms

Banking services are still primitive in many respects, both in terms of offer and client appetite, considering only a low percentage of bank clients are used to online banking services, believes George Mucibabici, Deloitte chairman.

As for banking market competition, he maintains things can now changed by improving services quality, with international banks present on the domestic market playing a major role in this regard.
“There’s still enough room to improve and simplify procedures in client relationships. A risk for the banking system, particularly for the banks that opened a lot of subsidiaries, comes from newcomers, which will bring and implement completely online platforms. Hence, there’s potential in this sense on the Romanian market and I believe this can only help the industry”.
Deloitte chairman considers that development of the banking sector the will be much more balanced in the coming period, after the boom years when lending institutions mainly focused on the retail segment, with a shift to funding sound businesses.
Mucibabici also says bankers were lured by the mirage of real estate in the boom period and sought to fund projects as large as possible, many of which have now been abandoned.