SME Banking

The Bank has a rich and flexible product offer addressed to clients from the SME segment, which allows for the adjustment of many parameters to the individual needs of the client.

The offer includes products such as:

• transactional products as part of the customer’s account or package, including: cashless domestic and cross-border transactions, cash transactions (including closed ones), cash transactions – deposits and withdrawals in Bank branches, payments at Poczta Polska, deposits and withdrawals at counters and in deposit machines, domestic transfers (including transfers in the Elixir, Sorbnet and Express Elixir systems), foreign transfers (including SEPA transfers, SEPA D0, TARGET), debit cards (PLN, EUR, multi-currency), credit, charge, identification of incoming payments, Host 2 Host – integration of the financial and accounting system with the internet banking system, automatic transfers of funds between various accounts, product packages – Turbo Box, FX Box, Open Box and Multi Box;
• deposit products for the customer’s investment of surplus cash (e.g. standard deposits, negotiated deposits with maturity and interest rate agreed on an individual basis, deposits made through the online banking system as well as deposit accounts for flexible surplus cash management);
• loan products providing funding for the day-to-day running of a business as well as for the implementation of investment and development projects, refinancing expenditure that has already been incurred or loans granted by other banks (overdrafts, revolving and non-revolving working capital loans and investment loans);
• trade finance products, export and import documentary letters of credit, documentary collection, letter of credit discounts, as well as issuing guarantees and processing external guarantees. The Bank offers fast and comprehensive services based on dedicated IT solutions;
• financial market transactions for purposes of currency, interest rate and commodity price risk management (e.g. FX Spot, FX Forward, FX options, IRS, interest rate options, commodity swap, commodity options);
• factoring services dedicated to manufacturing, sales and service companies entering into deferred payment sales transactions offered in cooperation with BNP Paribas Faktoring Sp. z o.o.;
• leasing services, including: the lease of machines and equipment, process lines, vehicles, real property (offered in cooperation with BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions Sp. z o.o.)

The year 2019 was devoted to the Bank’s integration, the final stage of which was a full system and process merger. The merger took place on 11 ^th November and included migration of Core RBPL customers to target systems, including the Bank’s main system and the Biznes Pl@net electronic banking system. All stages of integration have been completed as planned. As part of the merger, a number of activities were finalized, particularly important from the perspective of customers, among others:

• a new customer segmentation was introduced based on the best experiences from the two banks,
• the target sales network structure for the SME segment has been implemented,
• a standard customer portfolio model was developed for SME consultants,
• operational and information services have been integrated to form a Business Service Zone (BSZ) dedicated to the after-sales service of customers from the SME segment. BSZ is a modern service channel, within which tele-advisors support customers in the most important product and service areas, such as: bills, electronic banking, bank cards,
• key processes were optimized and standardized (with processes for the Corporate Banking Area),
• new, simplified and standardized (with the Corporate Banking Area) sales and after-sales documentation was introduced, including, inter alia, requests for services and standard letters templates,
• the product offer was expanded by introducing, i.a., new products in the area of ​​trade financing and by establishing a dedicated Deposit Team supporting clients in the field of investing funds,
• the visual identification of IT systems and electronic documents was changed in connection with the change of the Bank’s name,
• the product offer for customers was unified.

In addition to work related to the Bank’s integration, 2019 also was also devoted to efforts aimed at improving the quality and convenience of customer service, including the digitization of the most important areas of customer service and implementation of new IT tools. The key achievements in this area are:

• automation of the crediting process by introducing a new loan application tool – eWniosek (an online tool to help the customer apply for a loan) and the use of the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) system in the process of analysing financial data. eWniosek application gives the client and the advisor a possibility to cooperate while working on the credit application, which improves the process of preparing necessary information and documents by the client, thus reducing the necessity to exchange e-mails
• introduction of a loan agreement generator,
• implementation of a new on-boarding process for customers. The new tools ensured that the process of opening a new customer’s file, their accounts and related products is digital, fully secure and integrated.
• further development of the BiznesPl@net electronic banking system, including the launch of a product application module and after-sales instructions, digital signing of contracts as well as the addition of new functions used previously by exRBPL customers in the Online Biznes system.
• as regards ​​operational services, the second stage of improvements for the Business Service Zone operational process management system has been implemented, enabling automatic categorization of customer requests received by phone or email and providing reporting in this regard.

Bank guarantees and letters of credit

The Bank offers fast and comprehensive services related to guarantees and letters of credit, which are based on dedicated IT solutions.

In 2019, at the request of SME customers, the Bank issued:

• 818 bank guarantees for a total value of PLN 176 million.
• 205 import letters of credit with a total value of PLN 46.6 million, and handled 241 export letters of credit with a total value of PLN 139.6 million issued by third-party banks.

As at 31 December 2019, SME Banking deposits on a consolidated level amounted to PLN 10,134 million and were PLN 323 million, i.e. 3% lower than at the end of 2018. The main reason for this was the optimisation of deposit margins, which was possible due to the Group’s favourable liquidity situation after the completion of the merger with RBPL in 2019. The portfolio structure did not change significantly compared to 2018. Similar to the previous year, almost three quarters of the total deposits were current accounts (74%, increase by 3 p.p., with a decrease in the share of term deposits).

 

As at 31 December 2019 the value of the loans and advances portfolio in the SME Banking on a consolidated level amounted to 8,575 million, and was lower by 8% than at the end of 2018. The decrease was largely the effect of the sale agreement regarding an organised part of the Bank’s enterprise earmarked for conducting factoring activities to BGŻ BNP Paribas Faktoring sp. z o.o. (decrease in the volume of factoring receivables by PLN 374 million).

In 2019 the gross result of the SME segment was PLN 83.5 million, compared to PLN 91.4 million in the previous year.

The comparability of the results for 2018 was affected by the execution on 31 October 2018 of the transaction of acquisition of the Core Business of Raiffeisen Bank Polska S.A. by the Bank („RBPL”). The profit and loss account of the Bank’s Capital Group for 2018 includes only two months of RBPL revenues and costs.

The income on SME banking activity in 2019 amounted to PLN 485.3 million and was higher by 31% compared to the previous year. This result constitutes 10.7% of the Group’s total income on banking activity in the analysed period.