| | | Less than 1% of the Romanian users of financial services use the Internet banking | | -October 21, 2003- | Internet banking is one of the least used financial services in Romania, shows a survey carried out by GfK Romania. Only 1% of the users of financial services use the Internet banking. Most users of financial services use current accounts in ROL (39.54%), fixed-term deposits (29.77%) and cash withdrawal cards for ATM-s (27.36%). Private pensions are used by 0.7% of the clients of financial services, while life insurance by 2.4%. however, 1% of the Romanian users of financial services contemplate using the Internet banking within the next 12 months. From the total population aged over 15, 64.41% do not use any financial service, 14% use current accounts, 10.5% - fixed-term deposits and 9.7% - cash withdrawal cards for ATM-s.
The Romanians' limited use of financial services provided via Internet is not different from the worldwide trend. The GfK analysts have concluded, based on a survey carried out by GfK Marktforschung on a sample of over 1500 users of financial services provided via Internet, that the expectations of financial services distributors with respect to the e-CRM system might not be fully met. This has nothing to do with the poor performance of the electronic system or some unprofessionally designed web sites. The real problem is that many of the financial services sites are not built to meet the needs of on-line clients. According to the survey, 17 million users have chosen to carry out bank transfers on-line in 2001 and over 2 million have managed their shares accounts on-line. Within the same timeframe, approximately 9 million Internet users (28%) have visited the sites of insurance companies seeking information. Due to the fast development of the Internet, the financial sector wanted to offer this platform as an alternative for its clients, by use of the CRM system. It seem that, overall, on-line offers based on the CRM system have little chances to succeed. At present, clients do not take the aspect of a web site into account when choosing an on-line financial services distributor. The way information and offers are presented is not enough to convince the clients to choose one or the other company, and this applies to all types of financial services. Clients have much conservative criteria for choosing a company to work with, criteria such as good prices, previous relationship between client and company as well as image of the financial services distributor. The security of data transmissions, quality of on-line consulting and additional services are less important. Banks' and brokers' clients see the Internet as a mean to saving money and time. Thus, their expectations are primarily centered on user-friendly programs, while elements related to the content (such as the range of products, information and entertainment) play, by comparison, a secondary role and contribute only to a small extent to the client satisfaction.
The results of this survey with the topic "e-CRM in the on-line financial sector" were included in the latest GfK Marktforschung study. The survey was carried out on the representative sample of over 1500 people aged over 18, who perform on-line banking transactions, selling of shares or buy insurance policies via Internet.
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