Understanding customers’ needs, talking to them personally, putting advisory banking centre stage, and offering products and services in a unified, coherent way are the new philosophy of the revamped Alpha Bank, which is changing on several levels.
“We are growing so that we can be useful to our customers, whether they are individuals or businesses. And what sets us apart from the competition is that we did the work first and presented it afterwards,” the bank’s chief executive, Vasilis Psaltis, said during the presentation of Alpha Bank’s fundamental rebranding. On the sidelines of the event, he also proposed a series of solutions for bad loans aimed at putting borrowers back on a sound footing.
The ‘new Together’
Having undergone a profound transformation over the past six years, Alpha Bank’s management is now delivering on the commitments to customers embodied in that transformation.
Supporting the ‘new Together’ is the broad range of products, services and advisory banking the bank now offers, thanks to the selective acquisitions it has made in recent years, as well as its strategic partnership with UniCredit. All this is being put into practice through the new customer-service model at the bank’s first upgraded branch, in Kolonaki, with other locations across the network set to follow.
The bank’s management offered a first glimpse of what is to come, announcing three new initiatives: raising the minimum salary to €2,300 gross from 1 March 2027; remote career opportunities for executives based in the regions; and the Silver Together programme to support employees’ parents.
“Each month, the bank will roll out more of its new products and services as part of the new customer-service model,” Vasilis Psaltis said.
Understanding and usefulness
The practical philosophy underpinning the ‘new Together’ rests on two pillars: understanding and usefulness. After the years of crisis, “we must help restore customers’ trust in banks,” Mr Psaltis said, highlighting the trust gap that opened between customers and banks at the start of the economic crisis and remains, to some extent, today.
“We support progress in life and in business,” he added.
The need for larger businesses
Speaking specifically about businesses, Alpha Bank’s chief executive said: “The Greek economy needs businesses that invest and expand into foreign markets. They need to grow in scale.” In this context, he said, Alpha Bank would support business owners with financing, access to foreign markets and advisory services tailored to their needs.
UniCredit is a major asset in Alpha Bank’s efforts to support businesses by providing access to 13 markets.
Solutions for bad loans
On the sidelines of the rebranding presentation, Alpha Bank’s chief executive spoke in particular about non-performing loans, especially mortgages. He called resolving them fully and permanently a matter of national importance, saying that as long as they remain under routine servicing in servicers’ portfolios, they deprive both the economy and the banking system of opportunities.
“Unless they are resolved permanently and comprehensively, retail lending will not start growing again,” he said. According to Alpha Bank’s CEO, this is because a significant number of individuals remain trapped with servicers and shut out of access to banking services.
“We need to look at how they can return to normal repayment arrangements,” he added. According to Vasilis Psaltis, solutions are available, provided they are agreed with all the parties involved: the buyers of the loans, the servicers and the banks that would take on their refinancing.
As he said, banks can assess which loans have been cured and which have not, and devise solutions tailored to each borrower’s actual ability to pay. Subject to certain conditions, an overall solution could even include a haircut on the debt.
On the issue raised by the SSM, as revealed by Euro2day.gr, concerning borrowers’ ability to service their loans until the age of 70 , Alpha Bank’s chief executive said one possible solution could be to add younger guarantors when the original borrower or existing guarantors have exceeded the appropriate age limit.
In the same context, Alpha Bank’s chief executive also referred to practices used in other European countries, such as perpetual mortgage loans, which have no predetermined maturity date.
With these products, the financing is linked to the property itself and can be transferred with it, creating a different framework for managing mortgage debt.