ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank creates ACBA Business Partner sub-brand

ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank has created ACBA Business Partner sub-brand with a view to bring all of its corporate products together.

According to ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank's CEO Nikolay Hovhannisyan, the sub-brand will show customers that ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank is not a universal rather than just an agrarian bank.

"Even though we provide over 60% of all agricultural loans in Armenia, the share of agricultural loans in our own loan book is just 30%. We have always been active in financing SMEs. As of today we have almost 75,000 SME customers working in agriculture and over 6,000 customers representing other sectors," Hovhannisyan said.

He said that on Sept 28 the bank launched a Be Our Partner campaign for SMEs having business loans in other banks and credit companies. They are offered to transfer their loans to ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank and to get in exchange a new 30% softer loan. Corporate customers will also be offered an 8.99% credit line to stimulate their import/export activities, ARCA Business and Visa Business cards and a chance to use ACBA ON-LINE system free of charge. The campaign will last till Dec 12.

According to ArmInfo's Financial Rating of Banks of Armenia, in Jan- June 2014 ACBA-Credit Agricole Bank had the second biggest loan book in Armenia's banking sector (193.2bln AMD or 1.9% more than in Jan-June 2013). Some 67.8bln AMD or 35.1% of all loans were given to economy.  SMEs received 26.5% of all loans. As of July 1 2014 the bank's capital totaled 53.9bln AMD (4.5% more than on July 1 2013, the biggest capital among Armenia's banks). The assets grew by 4.7% to 273.1bln AMD. In Q2 2014 the net profit exceeded 1bln AMD. The bank has 52 branches (14 in Yerevan and 38 in the regions), 276,000 customers and 1,200 employees.