by Ana Dorobantu
According to a recent study made by GfK Financial Market Data Service (FMDS) on Central and Eastern Europe, four out of five citizens of the Central Europe have direct access to the banking system, while in Eastern Europe, the number goes lower than 50%.
“It seems that it is not so obvious to a part of the population to be a client of a bank,” – the expert of Central Eastern European financial matters has claimed. “At the same time, the 20-to 50-year-olds are a huge market potential to banks in all of these countries.”
For an instance, almost 100% the Slovenians with their age over 15 have at least one connection with a bank. They are followed closely by the Slovakians, Czechs, Croatians, Ukrainians and Hungarians with 80%. Countries like Bosnia–Herzegovina, Russia and Serbia have 70% out of the active population with at least one connection with a bank. The last ones in using the banking system are apparently Romania and Bulgaria.
More and more there is a persistent question: why are we less interested in saving money? This question arises from the situation where the citizens that are not so interested in saving money. This is due to some major circumstances such as the need to spend or invest without saving first. In Bulgaria, for an instance, only 6% out of the active population succeeded in saving money in 2009, while in Slovakia or Lithuania the percentage grows up to 30-35%. This is one of the outcomes of the 2008 economic crisis.
None the less there are two major reasons for why do people save money. The first one is that they need some back up savings just in case and the second one is that they’re saving money for their children or so they’ll have a considerable deposit when they’ll retire.
Except these two major reasons for saving money, there is another important option for those interested in saving money and that is investing in the real estate area. In 2009 the prices on the real estate market dropped considerably compared with 2008.
On the whole, the most popular goal for saving up in Eastern Europe is the improvement of the household equipment, holidays and support for family members.
As I was saying in the previous article, the banking system must fight in 2010 with the general mistrust of their clients and possible clients. The low percentage of the active citizens that are opening a bank deposit is only the proof that there is a general mistrust in this sector.
What will they do considering all that? The National Bank of Romania already stated out the purpose of gaining credibility in the Romanian banking system in 2010.
Good article!!!However there are some aspects related to the romanians' and bulgarians' economy, that are not presented in the article.Given the fact those two countries are poor there is no doubt most of a family monthly revenue is spent on food and sometimes clothing.Therefore a romanian or bulgarian will find rather difficult to make some savings, savings that will be deposited as trust funds and as a result the percentage of people using the bank system for economy purposes is at a low level.
RispondiEliminaThere needs to be an incentive to actually wanting to save and have a nice payoff or reward, not just to have money incase of emergencies. Perhaps if there are more options to have your money grow and be there for you and your family later, perhaps that would spure people to save and invest. Given that there seems to be more money going out then there is coming into a house hold, there is seldom enough to even considering banking. Just my 2 cents in change. Great article!
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