For many banks in central and eastern Europe the corporate client is no longer king. Increasing competition and decreasing margins mean that corporate banking has lost its lustre. The traditional corporate client is being usurped by a new breed of customer, one that has been quietly growing for a number of years, nurtured by the expanding range of shops and boutiques in downtown Warsaw and Prague. Banks are calling this new client "the consumer"; and consumer retail banking is suddenly a business that everyone wants to be in.
Banks that traditionally have focused solely on corporate or investment banking activities are re-defining themselves as mass market, consumer retail banks. In Poland, Bank Slaski is already some way towards achieving the transformation, helped by the investment and know-how of ING.
When the Dutch bank became majority shareholder in 1996 it realized that the corporate market, where Slaski had traditionally focused, was too crowded. "We decided it would be too risky to focus solely on corporate banking," says Bank Slaski first executive vice-president, Ludo Wyngaarden. Since then, the bank has invested more than $100 million on its retail banking project, boosting its market share from 5% to 6.7%