“Modernisation of the bank is a demand of every single member of the board, and describes what is going on in the bank right now,” Bert Pijls, Chief Executive Officer told the Cyprus Weekly in an interview.
The latest approach of Cyprus’ third largest lender, which now has high-tech Wargaming Company and Dan Loeb’s Third Point Management as major shareholders, is that it is not just a Cypriot bank, but a European bank based in Cyprus that aims to meet the highest possible standards.
“Investors come from overseas, supervisors are from overseas, our competition in the future will come from overseas, so there is a lot of modernisation especially when it relates to technology,” Pijls said. Global Finance has already named the credit institution among the winners of the 2015 World’s Best Consumer Digital Banks in Western Europe, while the bank’s mobile app, with its ‘Spendometer’, is receiving international acclaim.
“The British are wondering how a relatively small bank in Cyprus managed within six months and at one-tenth of the cost to create an app much better than any other you can find in the UK,” Pijls said.
Hellenic Bank has also recently introduced the PayBand for the first time in Cyprus: a fast, convenient and secure payment device which you wear on your wrist and allows you to pay on-the-go without using cash or cards.
The lender’s focus on technology is because customers demand it. Its competitors – especially those overseas – already have the technology and, in the future, they will be able to enter the Cypriot market without much presence on the ground.
At the same time technology reduces costs for the bank.
To bring staff up to date, Hellenic has increased its spending on training and development of its employees by almost 30%, while occasionally recruiting people that already have the necessary expertise.
“Digital is not something that you do or you don’t do. Digital is something you are or you are not. Digital more than anything else is a mind-set issue,” said the CEO.
“The experience so far has been positive and challenging, and at the same time very rewarding,” Pijls said.
NPL challenges
Pijls says there is still work to be done to stabilise the improvement in non-performing loans (NPLs). He expects the decline in NPLs will be slow and gradual because the “crisis is predominantly a real-estate crisis”.
“Nothing helps NPLs more than a growth of GDP. We have to grow our way out,” he said.
Pijls described the current real GDP growth rate, which hit 2.7% year on year in the first quarter, as “perfect”, and expressed his satisfaction at the ability of the government to maintain fiscal discipline, lauding the steps it took towards tax reductions.
“A healthy increase in GDP has to be on everybody’s agenda: the government – I believe they have – the regulators and the banks,” he said.
Pijls expressed his confidence that economic growth will further encourage clients to negotiate with lenders to reach a viable restructuring of loans, while the bank follows a “one client at a time” process.
Meanwhile, the bank is still thinking of effective ways to sell bad loans in order to accelerate the reduction of NPLs.
“For assets to be solved, in my view, you need independent debt-servicing similar to what Spain has. Those who want to buy the debt want to know who will be servicing it,” Pijls explained.
Source: InCyprus
