Toader, KPMG: Banks are not here to do business with the state

The only choice for the bankers who want to boost revenues is to start lending to private sector again, which was frozen last year, says Serban Toader, head of KPMG, one of the most powerful auditors on the local market, who is familiar with the balance sheets of many banks in the system.

“Banks have so far granted loans to the state and that was easy, because the interest was satisfactory and the risk was low. Yet many bankers believe such a model is good for short term but is not sustainable. Because they did not come here to do business with the state. They came here to do business with clients. The clients, if you don’t talk to them for six months or one year, will forget about you. When the crisis is over, the clients will remember how they were treated by their service providers. And there are banks that realised it,” Toader, 38, explained in an interview for ZF.