The FINANCIAL — Loans and especially mortgage loans are among the hottest and most demanded offers at the leading banks in Georgia: Bank Republic, TBC Bank, Bank of Georgia and VTB Bank. The survey by The FINANCIAL revealed the most popular current offers as well as the loans and deposits tendencies at the four leading banks.
HOT Offers
TBC Bank
The hottest offer at TBC Bank in the loans direction is the 30 minute Fast Auto Loan. There are 3 types of the loan: New Car, Used Car and Auto Import.
0% car Instalment for new automobiles – For those who wish to buy a new car, TBC Bank has a special offer. Cars with this auto loan can be purchased at any of TBC Bank’s partner dealers with a minimum 30% cost sharing.
Auto loan for car import – For those who wish to buy any type of second-hand car from abroad, finance the import of the car and pay for the purchase within a reasonable term. TBC Bank together with Strada Auto, Caucasus Auto Import, Lucky Group+, offers a wide range of cars, the import of cars from abroad and the cheapest financing of the purchase.
Replace an old car with new – TBC Bank and company IBG (Iberia Business Group) offer customers the easiest and most comfortable way of replacing an old car with a new one.
If the car is selected in the dealer shops of Renault/Nissan, Audi/Volkswagen and Kia/Peugeot, the expert will evaluate the car on site and the first deposit will be financed with the value of the old car. The rest of the sum will be paid by an instalment car loan, the annual interest of which starts from 16%.
In 2010 TBC Bank also offered the society credit card – Instalment Card. The user of Instalment Card can freely purchase presents and step-by-step cover the instalment payment over a period of 10 months.
“Due to high demand from the market and especially from society, Instalment Card is one of the most fast-selling products at present. Since its introduction until the present demand for the card has not slowed, which is probably due to a combination of its simplicity and flexibility,” said Nino Buzhgulashvili, Sales Department Product Manager at TBC Bank.
Bank of Georgia
Bank of Georgia has an unprecedented offer for mortgage loans – clients who obtain a mortgage loan through July 31 will not cover the first months’ interest.
The top offer by Bank of Georgia is the American Express card. Bank of Georgia is the exclusive issuer of American Express payment cards, as well as the American Express merchant acquirer in Georgia. Bank of Georgia exclusively issues American Express Card and American Express Gold Card in Georgia. Quite recently the Bank started issuing a new credit card, the American Express Blue Card.
“Since November 2009, Bank of Georgia has been offering the exclusive personal banking service SOLO. SOLO is a full range of banking services coupled with exclusive offers and privileged service. SOLO assumes an individual approach to each client, a personal banking service, specially designated service centres, high quality service, comfortable ambiance and an exclusive opportunity to obtain the American Express Gold Card. This week a SOLO corner was officially opened in Batumi. It’s the first time that an exclusive personal banking service has offered a designated spot to its clients outside Tbilisi,” declared Sophie Balavadze, Corporate Communications and PR at Bank of Georgia.
Bank Republic, Societe Generale Group
“The most popular offer at Bank Republic is our offer of co-finance together with EBRD for our corporate clients which means lower interest rates and better conditions for large corporate clients,” said Beso Jikurauli, Head of the Corporate Portfolio Management Department at Bank Republic.
“We also have special rehabilitation plans for companies that are suffering from economic crises; we are doing restructuring of the exposure in a way to match a client’s business abilities with the repayment schedule,” said Jikurauli.
“In June 2010 the Bank launched a very hot campaign for lending, during which the Bank issued mortgage loans at a fixed 13% and consumer/auto loans at a fixed 17%. The customer incurred no additional charges, all the following services were free of charge: loan approval, loan withdrawal, life insurance for the whole loan duration, no notary costs. The campaign was very successful and attracted a large number of customers to the Bank,” said Salome Makaridze, Deputy Head of Retail Banking Division at Bank Republic.
The following special offers are ongoing at Bank Republic – For those who wish to study in Caucasus University there is a student loan at 19% + insurance free of charge
For those who wish to purchase a Kia automobile the loan’s interest rate is from 0-13%, with loan approval in 15 minutes, and down payment from 0%. In the case of a Kia Optima purchase, the customer can receive a 0% loan with 2 year duration.
For those who wish to purchase various household appliances there is a special offer in Elite Electronics’ shops with 0% instalment for the first 3 months. If the customer receives their payroll at Bank Republic then there is an additional discount of 6% for the annual instalment. Furthermore there is a special offer at the shop Smile with 0% instalment for the first 5 months, and at Beko – 0% instalment for the first 3 months.
There is a special offer for Western Union service users. The first 2,000 users of the service who receive or send money 3 times during the campaign, will receive a special prize. Moreover all clients who at least once send or receive money via Western Union during the marketing campaign have the chance to win an automobile every month.
VTB Bank
“Before today loans were accessible for only those who had been involved in a remuneration scheme, however at present any willing individual can take out a loan,” said Nino Bendeliani, Head of the Public Relations Department at VTB Bank.
The latest product offered by VTB Bank is its renewed mortgage loan. The maximum amount of money is 500,000 USD, the maximum term – 120 months with an annual interest rate from13%. Loan taking is available for purchasing real estate, for reconstruction as well as refinancing of an existing loan. Together with that, the minimum income of the debtor should be 1,000 GEL after making the payment.
Top loan
Among the top loan offers at Bank Republic the following are listed: Mortgage Loans (designed for financing real estate purchase, renovation or construction, from 13% with a maximum loan duration of 25 years); Credit Cards (with a 55 days grace period and 0% accrual if the customer fully repays the bill by the dues date), Payroll Loans (special lending conditions and advantages for Bank Republic payroll customers, no security is required); Auto Loans (from 19% for used cars and from 0-16% for new cars); Business Loans – from 16%, for loans below 7,000 USD no security is required); and Consumer Loans – comfort (loan from 19% for up to 50,000 GEL).
As for deposits, the top offer at Bank Republic is Megobari Deposit – a highly flexible deposit with the possibility to install and withdraw money any time customers wish, equipped with a banking card and earning interest, it is a very popular product for a wide range of customers. Then there is Term Deposit – a long term high fixed interest earning account.
Within cards the top offers at Bank Republic are Visa Cards of all ranges – Electron to Platinum designed for various customer segments. Gold and Platinum cards offer a variety of benefits and discounts worldwide and earn 3% interest on positive balance.
For corporate businesses the top offers by Bank Republic include loans and trade finance, investment loans – from 12% with maturity up to 7 years and the possibility of having up to a 1 year grace period. Local trade finance – from 1.5%, confirmed LC form – 5% and unconfirmed LC from 3%.
“For local trade financing we have Bid Bond, Performance Bond, advance payment, guarantee for custom and other payables and quality guarantee,” declared Jikurauli, Head of the Corporate Portfolio Management Department at Bank Republic.
“Activity mainly increased from the second quarter of the year 2010; the most demanded products were investment and working capital financing loans. In general we have a positive trend and our corporate portfolio is increasing steadily,” said Beso Jikurauli.
Increasing deposits My Goal and Bonus Deposit at TBC Bank are the top offers by the Bank. With My Goal an individual can easily and conveniently accumulate a desired amount of money for a particular purpose (e.g finance a car, holiday) and in addition select a name for it, according to the goal: My Vacation, My New Car, My Paris Trip.
The benefits of the deposit are as follows: the individual can earn a higher interest rate for a shorter term and smaller deposit amount, no fixed deposit schedule, initial minimum deposit is not required, the amount can be accumulated via TBC Bank’s convenient electronic services – TBC Pay, internet banking, mobile as well as phone banking. Furthermore monthly deposit is as low as 10 USD/EUR/GEL/GBP. A name can be given to the deposit according to the goal. No cap limits are set for the monthly deposits. A bonus deposit is the simplest way to save money. If the individual makes monthly deposits for 14 months, TBC Bank will give them the 15th amount of the deposit as a bonus. Bonus Deposit is opened using special Bonus Coupons, which are of different denomination – 20, 30, 50 and 100 units. The monthly deposits as well as the 15th bonus amount at the end of the deposit term are determined by the coupon.
Statistics
The corporate gross loan portfolio at Bank of Georgia amounted to 951 million GEL as of 31 March 2010, compared to the corporate gross loan portfolio of 870 million GEL of the same period in 2009. The corporate loan portfolio constitutes: trade – 32%, energy – 9%, Fast Moving Consumer Goods – 15%, construction and real estate – 19%, industry and state – 17%, pharmaceuticals and healthcare – 2%, other – 6%.
Retail loans at Bank of Georgia originated in Q1 2010 amounted to 128.2 million GEL compared to 55.9 million GEL in Q1 2009. RB loan portfolio as of 31 March, 2010, constitutes: micro loans – 14%, mortgage loans – 43%, credit cards and overdraft – 16%, consumer and other – 27%.
The volume of mortgage loans at Bank of Georgia originated in Q1 2010 amounted to 27 million GEL, compared to 10.1 million GEL in Q1 2009; consumer loans amounted to almost 49 million GEL in Q1 2010, compared to 32.1 million GEL in Q1 2009; micro loans amounted to 51.6 million GEL as of 31 March, 2010, compared to 15.3 million GEL in Q1 2009.
The total volume of client deposits at Bank of Georgia reached over 1.2 billion GEL as of 31 March, compared to clients’ deposits at almost 979 million GEL in the first quarter of 2009.
“Mortgage loans are the leader according to issued loan capacity. From the demand side customer loans are highly demanded and are of the largest quantity. However due to the last advertising campaign from the Bank, the interest increased slightly for auto loans and consequently increased in quantity,” said Nino Buzhgulashvili, Sales Department Product Manager at TBC Bank.
The year 2009 was quite active from the deposits side at TBC Bank. Deposit portfolio capacity increased by 123 million GEL and exceeded 570 million GEL in the third quarter of 2009, meaning that despite the financial crisis and unstable political environment in the country, TBC Bank had the best outcomes on the market on the deposits side since June 2009.
“TBC Bank is again the leader and its share among 11 banks is 31.6%,” said Buzhgulashvili.
VTB Bank issued a total of 37,358,000 GEL during the first quarter of 2010 and the loan portfolio grew by 6% in the current year.
The tendency of deposits at VTB Bank increased by 25% from 1 January to 17 July, 2010. The total volume of deposits consists of 38,444,606 GEL. More than 2,016 deposits were opened at VTB Bank during the first quarter of 2010.
