Still, Georgiadou who was addressing the Economist conference inNicosia on Tuesday said, the new regulation framework from Europe has helped address regulatory shortcomings of the past.

Hellenic Bank is together with Bank of Cyprus, the Cooperative Central Bank and RCB Bank, one of the Cypriot lenders supervised by the European Union’s Single Supervisory Mechanism.

She added that while the bank, which like other Cypriot lenders is struggling to reduce its non-performing loan ratio, it is also in the process of setting the foundations for its future operations.

Hellenic Bank effectively “runs three banks,” she said.

A ‘bad bank burdened with non-performing loans, which are also plagued by decreasing values of collaterals amidst a drop in real estate prices, a ‘good bank,” which continues to see its deposits increase even as deposit rates remain near zero and tries to extend credit to the economy and even fix internal attitudes related with labour inflexibility, and a “bank of the future” that will operate digitally and on mobile platforms 24 hours, seven days a week, she said.

“We don’t want to wake up one day having fixed the non-performing problems and discover that our traditional business model is obsolete,” she said.

Source: Cyprus Mail