This strategy reveals the fierce competition over skills in the market, as banks find it easier to recruit people from competitors and pay a little higher salary than hire fresh graduates.
The salary costs of the top ten banks in the system stood at 3.4 billion lei (EUR771 million) at the end of last year, according to the information available on banks’ websites, while the number of employees stood at 39,000, 67% of the total number of employees in the industry. The employees of the top ten banks accounted for 50% 2008.
The statistics do not include ING Bank, because it operates as a branch of the Dutch group by the same name and not as a subsidiary, so it does not publish detailed annual reports.
The order of banks in the top ten ranking is not the same as it was in 2008, but no bank among the top ten back then dropped out.
While the overall salary spending did not go down, some banks did cut it, while others increased it. BCR, for instance, curbed its personnel spending by 40% in the past six years, while Volksbank raised it by 60%.
BCR is the only bank among the top three that managed to spend less on employees, while BRD saw its personnel spending go up 9% and Banca Transilvania by 20%.
Banca Transilvania ranked seventh in the banking system in 2008 and is now close to dislodging BRD from its second leading position, following takeover of rival Volksbank’s local operations.
Banks say layoffs and branch closings are no longer a viable solution for the future, choosing to focus on going digital instead, a process that in turn will improve bank service penetration rate.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)