BRD grants financing of over 2 billion lei since start of IMM Invest program (Francois Bloch)

BRD has granted financing of over 2 billion lei, since the start of the IMM Invest program, the largest part of it going towards constructions, trade, agriculture and transport area, Francois Bloch, CEO of BRD Groupe Societe Generale declared in an interview for AGERPRES.

Asked if banks have funds to carry out new financing programs in the near future, he said that PNRR (Romania's National Recovery and Resilience plan) is a strategic plan, which can change the face of Romania. Francois Bloch declared that banks wish to be partners in implementing financial projects with European funds and have all the necessary resources to accomplish this, especially if there is a good cooperation between commercial banks and international financial institutions.

Furthermore, he highlighted that the banking market is facing major changes, which were accelerated by the Covid crisis, such as digitization, automation, changing clients' expectations, in the sense of having more mobility, simplicity, transparency, and that the large universal banks need to transform. They need to adapt their way of networking to the current tendencies of digitization and differentiating on client segments, to develop new business models, to integrate innovation in business.

"The aggregated indicator published by BNR (National Bank of Romania) shows that generally, the Romanian banking system managed to achieve positive results since the beginning of the pandemic, although at a lower level than in previous periods. If the question is referring to recovering the activity deceleration, we see a significant comeback of the banking activity since the beginning of this year, with growths in lending, as well as in deposits. Regarding BRD, the loan production has been, since January until now, even higher than the pre-pandemic period", Bloch said.

At the definitive end of the period when moratorium requests could be submitted, BRD had postponed loans, in total, for over 50,000 people that requested this.