ASPIS BANK announces that, on Thursday 15 November, its Chairman & Managing Director, Mr Constantine Karatzas, offered a lunch to Press correspondents on the occasion of the launch of the Bank's new core banking IT system and its organizational restructure. Mr C. Karatzas stated among others " with the conclusion of its reorganization, the Bank has entered to the next phase of the implementation of its strategy, laying particular emphasis on its growth on more profitable sectors, such as consumer credit and small-and-medium size enterprises financing, and geographical expansion to New Europe".
Mr C. Karatzas briefly retraced the most important landmarks of ASPIS BANK's evolution, from its foundation, in 1992, to date. He particularly referred to the period between 2001 and 2007, following the Bank's transformation from a Mortgage to a Commercial Bank that offers a full range of banking services. As Mr Karatzas stated, with regard to organization, the pre-2001 infrastructure, although gradually improved and updated, held back the Bank's rapid and effective transformation to a commercial bank. For this reason, an integrated reorganization plan, finally effected in 2007,was deemed essential.
The reorganization plan focused on infrastructure and procedures. In this framework, the new core banking Finacle IT system was put into operation after careful review, planning and tests. This gives the Bank even greater growth potential, by increasing to a greater extent its flexibility, speed, security and management information, and will make the implementation of its strategy more effective going forward. In parallel, the required changes in the administrative structure, aiming at sales growth, optimization of central services productivity and more effective cost control, are under way.
In this context, the Management, based on the Bank?s high capital adequacy ratio, has set a new strategy that is based on three pillars:Loan portfolio diversification with emphasis on consumer credit, by exploiting the mortgage loan clientele and more effective cross-selling of all the Group?s products and services. The aim is to fully cover client needs. Growth of SME clientele by offering integrated and flexible solutions for their financing and liquidity management, with emphasis on integrated plans for professionals. Given the Bank?s strong capital base, geographical expansion to New Europe markets via careful and selective investments.
In his conclusion, Mr Karatzas repeated his conviction that actions up to date as well as the Bank's new strategy will soon render higher profits to its Shareholders. Due to the impending announcement of the Bank's 9-month 2007 results (to be announced on November 22 following the closing of ATHEX), the Chairman & Managing Director did not disclose any expected financial figures.