Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Debt collecting gets…er, sexy?
Bank employees working in call centers and reminding clients of their overdue loans used to be as far to the bottom of the banking food chain as you could be. Not any more.
Raiffeisen International, the second-biggest lender in eastern Europe, has ramped up staff in its collections and risk management departments.
Active in 17 countries between the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan, it is exposed to a region that is among the hardest hit by the global financial crisis. Rampant loan growth of the last few years has turned into an equally rapid rise of bad debt.
“We substantially increased resources in our call centres, started new ones,“ Martin Gruell, Raiffeisen’s CFO, said ahead of the Reuters Central European Investment Summit in Vienna. “There are 40 percent more employees working in Collections than before the crisis.”
from Funds Hub:
The morgue after Christmas
He said at the Reuters Restructuring Summit in London that by the end of the year banks will issue "in patient", "out patient" or "morgue" judgements as they go about the business to decide who gets much needed loans and who does not.
from Changing China:
Don’t bank on mortgage spike
By Michael Wei
Don't count on a recent spike in home loans to greatly improve earnings at Chinese banks. That's because they are still a relatively small part of overall lending.
"It is not expected to have a huge impact on banks' overall earnings," Gao Shanwen, Essence Securities' chief economist said at the Reuters China Investment Summit, speaking about the rise in mortgage lending. Mortages make up only about 10 percent of total lending at present.
