Bank Pocztowy strategy: current accounts for those in the provinces?

According to the strategy accepted by the supervisory board of Bank Pocztowy (BP), all of its branches will be taken over Poczta Polska by 2004, lay off roughly two thirds of its staff and boost profits. The bank wants to focus on the retail sector and concentrate on current accounts, whose numbers they want to increase by more than ten fold by the end of 2005 from the present 90,000. BP will focus on expanding its activities in smaller cities and also attract small companies to use its products and services. "We will con centrate on current accounts and selective development of a loans portfolio, by which I mean offering loans for employees of BP, the police, local governments etc," said BP's president Andrzej Szukalski. By next year, the bank will transfer all its branches to Poczta Polska and will only remain responsible for launching products, procedures and managing risk. (Rze czpospolita, p. B7) M.M.