“We will continue the development of our digital solutions in 2022”

BRD Groupe Societe Generale started 2021 with ‘optimistic expectations’ and has managed to achieve its ‘best 9M ever’ in terms of loan production for individuals.

“After 2021, a year of economic recovery, reflected also in the financial industry, 2022 appears as more problematic, and will bring to attention certain imbalances brought by the pandemic period. The most important of these are inflation and supply chain disruption, followed by twin deficit and other uncertainties related to the stabilization of the pandemic,” Francois Bloch, CEO, BRD Groupe Societe Generale told The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“I am particularly pleased with the way in which the whole BRD team have approached this difficult and never-before-encountered context. (…) As far as we are concerned, we will pursue in 2022 our main projects. We’ll continue the development of our digital solutions, for both Retail and Corporate clients, and continue to focus on improving the quality of our services as well as bringing new ESG-compliant products to the Romanian market.”

COMMITMENT TO PERFORMANCE | BUSINESS EVOLUTION,  PROJECTS, PERFORMANCE, FIGURES  

“We started the year with optimistic expectations. The first vaccines were announced, there was a positive expectation horizon, and this laid the premises for a business recovery. This last hypothesis has been confirmed, as evidenced by the favorable evolution of our business activity and financial performance. However, the vaccination rate is still disappointing and the duration of the pandemic, combined with increased inflation and supply chain disruption, are weighing on future growth. 

Nevertheless, we had an exceptional loan production for individuals, with our best 9M ever, +48 percent YoY and +21 percent vs 9M 2019, an excellent performance on corporate financing, driven by both SMEs (+28 percent YoY) and large corporate clients (+17 percent YoY), a growing volume of assets under management (+29 percent YoY), which contributed to a net profit 25 percent higher YoY, of RON 920 million.

I am particularly pleased with the way in which the whole BRD team have approached this difficult and never-before-encountered context.”

STRATEGY & VISION |  RETHINK STRATEGY & PRIORITIES

“My main challenges during 2021 were to keep our focus, keep the pace in our main projects, remain close to our customers and ready to support them, preserve and enhance our bank’s reputation. It is always challenging to motivate people, whether managers or their teams, and this pandemic, with everything it has brought about in our activity, forced us to develop new ways of working to ensure cohesion and transversal cooperation. 

After 2021, a year of economic recovery, reflected also in the financial industry, 2022 appears as more problematic, and will bring to attention certain imbalances brought by the pandemic period. The most important of these are inflation and supply chain disruption, followed by twin deficit and other uncertainties related to the stabilization of the pandemic.

In the banking field, trends such as digitalization will be confirmed next year, with a wider range of services to be accessible online and, most probably, with new developments in the open banking area.

Sustainability is another trend that will become more and more clear in terms of actions next year and for sure in banking industry will see a range of new ESG lending products and services, as well as specific actions in this field.   

As far as we are concerned, we will pursue in 2022 our main projects. We’ll continue the development of our digital solutions, for both Retail and Corporate clients, and continue to focus on improving the quality of our services as well as bringing new ESG-compliant products to the Romanian market.”

PEOPLE & COMMUNITY | FOCUS ON SAFETY, SOCIAL APPROACH, LEVERAGE THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

“We identified a number of issues in which support is desperately needed. For instance, in the field of education, the fact that there are major gaps in literacy among children leads to what we call functional illiteracy, and this in a huge proportion – 40 percent of 15-year-olds do not know how to read and write or do not understand what they read. A 2015 OECD study shows that this has a huge impact on Romania on the long term – Romania’s GDP could be between 200 percent and 300 percent higher if functional illiteracy was eliminated until 2030.

What do we do in this respect? We are funding a digital platform with resources that help teachers eliminate gaps and work with children – the Alfabetar project, developed by the Association for Values in Education (AVE). In the first year, more than 30,000 children were tested and began having access to these resources.

Through the independent journalism platform for education, Scoala9, which we founded, we host daily analyzes, editorials, ideas about what modern education means and how teachers, students, parents, specialists believe that change can take place. We believe that journalism can shed light on what is good in our system, it can show us who and what really can change education and what needs to be done next.

We also have some other programs that focus either on creating 21st century competencies, such as BRD First Tech Challenge robotics programs, which gathers each year hundreds of high schools and thousands of students around this competition. 5 or 6 years ago, robotics was a nearly unknown zone in Romania, and there was almost no programming as a subject in high schools. Today, 5 years later, through the efforts of Natie prin Educatie foundation, but also with a financial support of over 1 Million EUR from BRD, we are talking about a real phenomenon – over 5,000 students participate every year in robotics competitions in Romania, and Romanian teams win important robotics competitions abroad. This is an example of how things can change in a relatively short time.

What we want is to be able to speak, in 5 years from now, about how we have managed, joining forces with many other actors, to help ever more children learn skills able to ensure a decent future for them in Romania.”

KEEN ON GREEN | Sustainable, greener,  community & environmentally-focus

“In 2021 we have made important steps in terms of improving our internal governance on ESG. Being aware of the importance of preparing ourselves for the upcoming legislative changes and increased expectations from stakeholders, we are currently working on our first proper sustainability report. It is extensive work, and it will only be public in the spring of 2022.

In terms of business, we have been an actor and even a leader, in some of the most important ESG transactions in Romania: the most important green loan, granted to Hidroelectrica, an ESG club loan granted to Nepi Rockcastle, as well as the first sustainability-linked corporate bonds emission that BRD intermediated for Autonom Services. 

We are also very glad that our efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2021, we received several important recognitions of our sustainability actions.  At the Sustainability in Business Forum and Awards 2021, we have received an award in the Sustainability Partnership of the Year category, while our colleague, Secretary General Flavia Popa, received the Sustainability Ambassador award.”

DIGITAL DNA  | Grasping tech, digital innovation, customer -driven, building new bridges

“The pandemic had rapidly raised long waiting questions, which we were forced to answer rapidly and test on-the-go remote working, reliability and robustness of this collaboration model. As we can see now, it was a challenge to which we have successfully responded. Few weeks ago, we launched the remote onboarding service, which facilitates a lot the path of becoming a BRD customer, in a process in which only 20 minutes elapse from the first interest to becoming a BRD customer to an operational current account. We are investing a lot in mobile banking environment, where customer can feel like home and easily execute payment orders, currency exchange, invoice payments and many others yet to come. One of the things we are particularly proud of is possibility to get a loan or refinance the existing loans in no more than 15 minutes online, seamlessly.

The digitalization trend will be confirmed next year, with a wider range of services to be accessible online and, most probably, with new developments in the open banking area. We might see some of the first complex integrations such as first examples of Bank-as-a-Service (through which banks provide access to their technology platform to other players) or of Bank-as-a-Platform (which allows customers to access external products or services through their regular bank).”

2021 IN 3 KEY WORDS

“Resilience, Hard work, Hope”