Romanians most appreciate employees’ affability and a prompt answer to requests when choosing a bank, with the perception about the respective bank’s stability being naturally more important when it comes to money depositing, reveal the conclusions of a survey on the level of financial education recently carried out for the Romanian Banking Association by GfK.
The findings of the survey lend numerical support to a series of already known assessments on the banking market situation: products and services are still little known, the habit of reading the contract presented by the banker is just shaping up and the appetite for information and offer comparison ahead of a choice is still low.
The most familiar banking product is the debit card, with the increase in the number of users being in recent years boosted by the payment of salaries on cards. However, GfK survey show that many debit card owners still do not know much about the product. The lowest level of familiarity with acquired products was registered in the case of users of Internet banking or of those who contracted a loan in a store.
The situation is not surprising considering only 2 in 10 Romanians seek information on financial-banking issues, while 4 in 10 are not interested in the field in the least.
Facing a prolonged jam because of the lack of loan demand, the banking industry is presented, through this survey, with a picture of the objective and subjective hurdles keeping the market in a standstill.
For instance, Romanians’ capacity to cope with new loans: for almost one fifth of people currently having loans to pay back, installment payment swallows over 40% of the total monthly income, leaving little room for additional borrowing.
The situation is the more difficult as for 45% of Romanians expenditures linked to rents, living, food, utilities and transportation take up over 60% of monthly income. Thus, it is not surprising that a rising number of bankers are seeing salary hikes as a major condition for lending to be resumed on the retail segment.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu, Editing by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu and Radu Bostan)