Handlobank joins a growing line of internet banks
Bank Handlowy's retail branch Handlobank is gearing up to introduce its e-banking service, Handlonet, in a couple of weeks. Handlobank will join the growing number of banks that have begun offering internet services to save money and increase their customers' ease of access.
"Our offer will be available to all people who are familiar with the internet," said Grzegorz Bobrownicki-Libchen, marketing director at Handlobank.
Bobrownicki-Libchen said he is aware Handlobank is not leading the pack with its internet service. "Of course, for all banks internet services will bring benefits because of costs," he said.
He said branch operations are expensive, and any business diverted to the internet cuts those costs dramatically. "It's profitable for banks as well as for their clients."
But slashing costs wasn't the only reason Handlobank went virtual.
"Handlobank is a bank which strongly reacts to signals beamed by modern banking," Bobrownicki-Libchen said. "We decided that spreading our offer out in this direction had become necessary."
Although Bobrownicki-Libchen wasn't able to give the current number of Handlobank clients, he said the fairly new retail bank had 60,000 customers by the end of last year.
"It is hard to predict how many of them will apply for a virtual account," he said. "The market is developing dynamically, but certainly, a few thousand of people will appear."
Bank Pekao was the first bank in Poland to offer online services. It launched its Eurokonto WWW service in November 1998 and has already attracted a few thousand customers to online accounts.
"By the end of last year we had about 1.8 million accounts and 4,500 of them were internet accounts," said Agata Bartosiak, a press officer at Pekao. "And in addition, about 1,000 virtual accounts were waiting for registration."
Eurokonto WWW's clients are able to make all the same transactions they would make in a normal branch, such as transferring money to third parties.
In fact, interest in online banking is so high at Pekao that the bank has to delay giving new customers access, Bartosiak said. "There is a big interest in Eurokonto WWW and applications are constantly are being sent," Bartosiak said. "That's why our clients have to wait about one month to start up their online accounts."
Another smaller bank, Pierwszy Polsko-Amerykanski Bank (PPABank), has also delved into online services. The bank has been offering its Pl@net service since January, according to Waldemar Leszczynski, spokesman for PPABank.
PPABank has 8,000 corporate and 4,000 individual accounts. To become a client at the bank, individuals must transfer at least zl. 3,000 per month to their accounts. The online service currently has a few hundred users, Leszczynski said.
