ING to bring Polish operations under one
Bank lšski (BSK), Polands third largest retail bank, is set to be replaced from Oct. 1 by ING Bank lšski (ING BS) and will have a new corporate lion logo.
This follows the decision by the Netherlands ING, the strategic investor in BSK, to bring all its Polish business operations under one roof and one logo, Jan Nijssen, head of INGs operations in Central and Eastern Europe said last week.
Poland is the third market for us after Holland and Belgium, Nijssen said. We want to grow here and this move helps us develop greater trust and transparency. He said the bank plans to raise its number of clients in Poland to 3.5 million by 2004 from the current level of 2.5 million.
Above all, this means a strengthening of the banks corporate structures and means that we can offer a wider range of products, which up until now were not available, for example, customer advisor services, said Marian Czakański, president of Bank lšski.
Nijssen said the bank wants to offer a range of cross-services, particularly the banks pension unit, Nationale-Nederlanden. He said ING aimed to lead the way into a third phase of pension reform, which promises more open competition on a pension market in which most individuals would not be tied into the state-run pension system.
Despite INGs stated commitment to the Polish, ING officials in Warsaw confirmed that the bank will likely reduce its stake in BSK to 75% from its current level of 82.8%. Ewald Kist, president of the ING Group, said earlier that this should increase the listed banks share liquidity and could raise its value in the process. Kist said last week that BSK would remain listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
ING bought 689.2 BSK shares at the start of August, raising its stake to 82.81%.
Critics of INGs move said the bank threatened to alienate existing clients and confuse potential customers. The name change could hit the bank harder than it expects if local Poles begin to identify the bank with Holland rather than Poland, said a banking analyst who chose to remain anonymous.
ING officials played down potential problems associated with changing the name of the bank. ING is widely seen as a reliable international player and we believe most people in Poland associate us with this, said Jan van Hensbergen, General Manager of ING Lion Real Estate.
Czakański said he was pleased lšski would remain in the banks new name. That is very important. We will now focus on moving into central Poland.
Van Hensbergen said the two banks were already well down the road to full integration of their organizational structures and would soon introduce a centralized information system.
