Strategy

We will use the promising market environment and the excellent starting position by focusing on the following strategic areas:

Organic growth and capital efficiency:

Growth in strongly expanding systems requires substantial investment which must pay off. In this context, investment refers to equity capital to support strong growth of risk-weighted assets rather than bank infrastructure and resources. The bank has to earn the cost of capital for the growing employment of capital, and this means that ever higher standards of value creation have to be met.

Our value-based management approach focusing on Economic Value Added (EVA) gives rise to further targets, namely keeping revenues as a percentage of risk-weighted assets at the current level and increasing them beyond this level, despite strong pressure on margins resulting from interest rate convergence and competition. In operating terms this means that growth needs to be based not only on classic on-balance sheet loans and deposits, but on the promotion of capital market products and fee-earning business. Our objective is revenue growth rather than volume growth.

In our expansion strategy we take a country-by-country approach differentiated according to specific market characteristics. We will use the opportunities arising from our extensive network and thus leverage on UniCredit’s decisive competitive advantage: economies of scale in production and the use of locational advantages in Global Banking Services. We focus on best practice and mutual know-how transfer with regard to customer satisfaction, sales efficiency, product development and coordination of the range of products offered.

In those areas which are international in nature – be it that customer needs are international, be it that business is done in supraregionally organised markets – we will use our strengths, working closely with the relevant divisions, product lines and centres of competence: in corporate banking, we will continue to support our CEE customers’ business relations with companies in Italy, Germany and Austria with cross-border business solutions; in the asset management sector, we will use our market position and worldwide coverage with Pioneer; in investment banking activities, we will strengthen the joint market approach under UniCredit Markets & Investment Banking, and we will use the customer base in all countries with the standing of a large international bank.

We pursue long-term expansion based on strong local roots and the sharing of inter-national know-how. We aim to be good corporate citizens and are committed to ethical values defined in our Integrity Charter. We also want to benefit from the diversity of local talent and thus encourage international careers. Finally, with our branding policy, we aim to strongly promote the emergence of a Group identity and we want to be seen by our customers as a unique bank.