Under Estonian owners and rolling out a new trademark last year, Coop Pank saw strong growth on all its major business areas, the bank’s initial unaudited economic results for 2017 show.
Coop Bank’s net profit for FY 2017 was EUR 4.5 million. That includes a one-time gain of EUR 3.2 million from a sale of real estate. The bank will be re-investing all of the profit earned in order to expand its range of activity.
Coop Bank’s loan portfolio grew 56% in 2017 and the deposits portfolio increased by 24%. In the course of the year, Coop Bank’s market share in the Estonian banking sector grew from 1.5% to 2% for deposits and from 0.9% to 1.3% for loans.
The number of clients is up by 4,600, with over half of them being added in Q4 following the introduction of the new trademark. By year’s end, Coop Bank had close to 36,000 customers and its subsidiary Coop Finants, which provides financing for consumers, has nearly 95 000 customers. Coop Pank and its subsidiaries employ over 200 people at the company’s headquarters and in 14 offices across Estonia.
According to chairman of Coop Bank’s management board, Margus Rink, the aspect that required the most effort during the year was reorganizing the bank’s operations to align with the new business strategy and adopting the new trademark. “Last year was a period of laying the foundation for the new bank,” said Rink. “Our business volumes grew faster than the business plan envisioned for the first year. We introduced the new trademark, also implementing concrete changes in our brand promise for customers. The increase in customers in the last quarter shows we now have the attention of the customer groups that are key for us.” Rink added that new technological features have received much coverage, the most important ones being the launch of a fully up to date online and mobile banking environment and becoming the first Estonian bank to offer the option of opening an account electronically.
Rink noted that the most important goal for 2018 was continuing to grow Coop Bank’s volumes of activity. “We will continue recruiting new customers, and participate actively on the market for lending to both companies and individuals. Broadening the range of activity and cooperation with the Coop retail business will also continue. We plan to open additional banking locations in Coop stores across Estonia and in the spring we will start offering cash withdrawal at Coop checkout registers,“ said Rink.
Coop Bank, which is based on Estonian capital, is tapping into the synergy between retail and banking and bringing everyday banking services closer to people’s homes. Consisting of 19 cooperatives, Coop Estonia has about 80,000 individual owners and close to 600,000 regular customers.