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Banks stop attraction of deposits by Coops

01/12/2009 06:42
The commercial banks resist strongly to the deposit war declared by the 113 Cooperatives, stopping the frenzied increase in their market shares in deposits for the first time since January 2009. The change of their strategy, increasing their deposit rates to avert further outflow of deposits, seems to take effect.

The latest Central Bank data show that the share of the 113 Coops in the deposits fell for the first time in the past ten months.

The cost of the counter-attack, however, is not negligible. Although few months ago they offered interest rates of 3.5% for the new deposits, they increased them by 50 base points.

The gap between the Coops and the commercial banks in certain cases reaches 100 base points.

The Coops’ market shares in deposits fell to 21.32% in October from 21.34% in September and 18.38% in October 2008, when their market share recorded an increase of 2.94 percentage points.

In September, the Coops had deposits of €12.39 billion from €58.12 billion in the system.

Bank of Cyprus ranks first, followed by the Cooperatives, Marfin, Hellenic Bank and Alpha Bank.

Since early 2009, the Coops attracted €1.7 billion of the €2.1 billion of the new deposits in the system.