Only seven banks with more than 5% in market share

The biggest five banks on the market concentrate 54% of the total assets, and 26 banks have market shares of less than 1%, according to the data in the Annual Report of the NBR.

A strong segmentation can be seen right from the top, as only BCR and BRD have two-digit market shares, 20% and almost 16%, while the bank on the third place, Volksbank, has a market share of almost 7%. In total, only seven banks have market shares above 5%, and are rated as big banks by the NBR. “This is a normal concentration, similar to the levels in other countries, where the top five banks own about 50% of the assets,” says Valentin Lazea, chief economist of the National Bank. BCR lost 3.5% of its market share compared with December 2007, while BRD managed a slight improvement by 0.2% to 15.7%. The most spectacular jump was Volksbank’s, which climbed five positions to the third place, considering its market share went up 1.7% to 6.8%. As far as assets are concerned, BCR and BRD are far ahead of the rest of the banks, with 16 and 12.3 billion euros. Volksbank’s assets are less than half of BRD’s, 5.3 billion euros. The next four banks, Raiffeisen, Alpha Bank, UniCredit Tiriac and Banca Transilvania are very closely spaced, with assets ranging from 4.2 to 4.7 billion euros. The data presented by the NBR are established according to the local accounting standards (RAS) and do not include exposure outsourced by banks to other entities of the foreign groups that own them. Therefore, Volksbank was helped by the advantage of maintaining most loans in its balance sheet, while other players have seen their market shares artificially diminished. Ten other banks have market shares between 1 and 5%, thus being included in the medium-sized player category, which leaves 26 banks, out of a total of 43, sharing a little more than 8% of the assets in the system. Valentin Lazea says the hard times the economy is going through could lead to the exit of some players from the market.