The fact that we managed to close the year with record high income and over four times higher pre-tax profit confirms that the execution of our strategy for 2010-2012 brings notable effects, says Cezary Stypułkowski, President of the Management Board of BRE Bank.
In 2010, BRE Bank earned PLN 642 million net, with income at more than PLN 3.1 billion. A return to high profitability is an effect of both the improvement on the income side as well as a significant drop in loan loss provisions (costs of risk decreased to 114 bps in 2010).Costs in 2010 grew by 4.7 per cent YoY, as a result of business development. Therefore, BRE is becoming an increasingly efficient institution - the cost/income ratio in 2010 was 51.8 per cent, down from 54.2 per cent in 2009.High net interest income and acquisition of clientsAn increase on the income side mainly results from a better net interest income which amounted to PLN 1.8 billion in 2010. On top of that last year our net fee and commission income went up by another 25 per cent - that is an effect of both the increase in cross-selling in Retail Banking, as well as in the number of clients in all of our business lines, explains Cezary Stypułkowski.In Retail Banking the cross-selling ratio at the end of 2010 reached 2.81 products per client. The Bank is becoming an increasingly strong player in the segment of non-mortgage loans - its market share is 3.6 per cent. Last year, the total number of clients using bank services in Poland went up by 306 thousand.The number of clients serviced by the Corporate Banking area increased by 435 net, and reached a record high level. The Bank also uses its competence in servicing local government units. Starting practically from scratch, BRE became an important player with a 4.1 per cent market share in financing of this market segment.In 2010, the Bank implemented innovations. In the Retail Banking area what draws attention are new functionalities of the mTRANSFER system, which now allows to settle payments on the Internet directly from the cash loan or a credit card. In November, in turn, the Bank was named the best corporate on-line bank in the Central and Eastern Europe by Global Finance, a prestigious international magazine.