team spirit - Bankier.pl

Austrian Customer Business
Bank Austria Creditanstalt’s Austrian customer business comprises
the two business segments Private Customers Austria
and SMEs Austria, both of which meet the needs of specific
customer groups. The two business segments cover the Austrian
market (geographical area) and are retail banking divisions
with a common customer service approach. Therefore
BA-CA uses a single business model and a common – though
differentiated – sales organisation to serve these customer
groups. In the same way as the Large Corporates and Real
Estate segment is defined by a specific customer group –
large, internationally active companies – and by product competence
for international business, Austrian customer business
covers the sales organisation in a wider sense and a comprehensive
production approach using product factories which
include BA-CA’s specialised departments, the asset management
company AMG, Capital Invest and the private banking
subsidiaries. Several specialised subsidiaries perform backoffice
and settlement functions and provide technical infrastructure.
Austrian customer business is part of BA-CA’s core business,
which includes operations in Austria, international business
and financial market activities as well as CEE. Equity allocated
to the two business segments mentioned above was 26 % of
the total figure for the bank; and they contributed 27 % to
the bank’s total operating revenues. In the past two years,
business with private customers grew by 10 % (2004) and
19 % (2005) measured by risk-weighted assets. BA-CA has
thus proved that profitable expansion is also possible in the
extremely competitive Austrian private customer business (for
details, see the management report of the Group); and we are
also working to make business with SMEs profitable on a sustainable
basis through our restructuring programme from
2006/2007 onwards.
Bank Austria Creditanstalt’s high visibility and leading market
position in Austria provide a strong basis from which this
objective can be achieved: two-thirds of the Austrian population
associate the “red wave” in our logo with the Bank Austria
Creditanstalt brand. With a market share of 18 %, we are
the leading bank in Austria.
52 Austrian Customer Business
Share of customers (percentage represents BA-CA customers) 2005
Private customers 18 %
… of which in Vienna 51%
… of which high net worth individuals 26 %
Business customers 27 %
Small businesses (annual turnover up to € 7 m) 38 %
Medium-sized businesses (€ 7 m to € 40 m) 61%
Large companies (over € 40 m) 86 %
Market share as percentage of the Austrian banking market 2005
Loans 19.5 %
Customer deposits 12.4 %
Mutual funds (Capital Invest and Real Invest) 16.1%
BA-CA’s business model
In 2003 and 2004 we started to reorganise the sales network
across divisional barriers and to sharpen the focus on active
selling. We also separated the various functions – sales, production,
settlement – enabling them to concentrate on their
respective tasks with a view to achieving efficient division of
labour and quality improvements. In 2005 we completed
major stages of a multi-year programme aimed at enhancing
customer service capabilities, product competence and backoffice
efficiency. In 2006 we will complete our strategic reorientation
with a focus on restructuring the SMEs segment. We
are convinced that we now have a flexible business model for
retail banking which is in line with the most advanced management
approach to banking operations. This will enable us
as a universal bank to remain at the forefront of change in the
future.
� Organisational structure and customer service
approach: The top priority of our “Fit for Sales” programme
is to adjust our structure and product offering to meet specific
needs of the various customer groups we serve. Taking other
service industries as a model, we have been guided in these
efforts by an awareness that customer benefits and the bank’s
profitability will rise if we actively offer customers exactly the