When a major bank encourages you to buy local, it catches your attention. When each and every top executive within the bank becomes an „influencer‟ for a local business, the attention turns into genuine interest. You start asking yourself questions: if they are doing this, why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I start promoting local brands too? And just like that, a story about community and togetherness is born — a story that goes beyond campaigns and advertising budgets. It is a story about me, about you. A story about how we succeed in building together. The moment chosen–a difficult, heavy time in the midst of a pandemic, when bets were placed on how massive the collapse would be–shifts the entire conversation into the realm of „I care.” Banca Transilvania’s 2020 campaign, „Buy Local” (Cumpără de lângă tine–was one of the initiatives with the greatest impact on the entrepreneurial community during turbulent times. „I am deeply moved and truly grateful for the opportunity to speak about such a small business to such a large audience.‟ This statement belongs to Mihaela Ciobanu, a small artisanal producer from Rădăuți, Suceava County
No community is built only in good times. Trust, solidarity, and the sense of belonging to a place are forged when people choose to stick together, even when it would be easier for everyone to focus only on their own survival.
In business, it is easy to turn growth into an ultimate objective. To constantly track the turnover, team size, results, reputation, and the next level. To always look at how much you have built and how much more you can build further. But there is a question we should ask ourselves more often: what happens around us as we evolve?
When you buy from the neighborhood store, from the bakery across the street, from the café you thank daily for the aroma that wakes you up, your money returns to the community: into salaries, other businesses, jobs, initiatives, and people trying to build something. An initiative that starts from a leader and turns into a story where everyone takes part changes the perception of what a bank traditionally means, of its role as a financier of the economy.
Stup, the ecosystem created by the Banca Transilvania group for entrepreneurs and those wishing to launch their own business, has reached 1,000 businesses launched through Stup and 48,000 community members four years after its launch. After four years of organizing over 1,000 courses attended by more than 35,000 entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs, Stup is expanding its learning area into the online environment as well. Through the launch of the „Stup vine la tine‟ (Stup comes to you) initiative, members of this entrepreneurial community gain access to weekly courses broadcast live, online, considering that they have so far been organized exclusively at the Stup headquarters in Bucharest.
Stup provides access to the resources needed to turn an idea into a business and develop it: specialized consulting, digital services, financial and non-financial solutions, as well as free courses.
Who else is growing alongside us?
Who gained courage because they watched us build?
What opportunities did we create for others?
What relationships did we strengthen?
What communities did we help create?
And for those who still expect to find the bank only in a business center, on a busy avenue, or in large shopping malls, the answer is an absolute no.
You interact with the Banca Transilvania Group at a festival, among people dancing and singing. In a school, where children imagine the future and learn their first concepts about saving, cards, and investments. On a country road, in communities that come back to life the moment prominent figures notice them.
The Untold or Electric Castle music festivals, special movie nights at TIFF, the Via Transilvanica project, and the landmark events at the BT Arena in Cluj are a few simple examples where the bank steps completely out of its corporate skin and becomes the most passionate supporter of the communities it belongs to.
And the sheer diversity of these communities is astonishing. The young person going home at 4 a.m. after a ten-hour concert at Untold might not be found at TIFF, and vice versa. At 20 years old, it is all about the concerts; at 60, you enjoy a good movie. In both situations, BT seeks different contexts to be alongside its clients. Because the goal is to build a bank for everyone.
In Romania, 49% of public pension beneficiaries receive their pension only in cash, while 48% receive it in a bank account. The 389,281 individuals on disability pensions face similar hurdles.
The problem is not the phone. 95% of people aged over 15 have a mobile phone, and 75% have a smartphone. 77% have used the internet in the last three months. However, only 32% use their phone or the internet to pay bills, and 23% have digitally paid an online merchant.
The figures do not say why. Access barriers in branches, at ATMs, and applications are a plausible explanation.
Accessibility adapts buildings, devices, applications, and communication so that every client can use them independently. The result is financial inclusion: the same account, the same card, the same credit and the same conditions for everybody.
At BT, people with disabilities have access to all types of loans, current accounts, and bank cards under the same conditions as other clients and without additional requirements, subject to financial eligibility. For clients with visual, mobility, or hearing impairments, the bank has created dedicated operational workflows that utilize assistive technologies and sign language interpretation through the “Voices for Hands” (Voci pentru Mâini) application. At ATMs, 357 ATMs and recycling machines feature the Audio Guidance function.
Today, the bank is more than just a place where you make a transaction. Such a role would no longer keep pace with the times we live in. The role is to be there alongside the people who use money to build their lives, businesses, homes, education, or plans.