ABN Amro
A fine performance despite intense restructuring in the difficult year of 2002 has prompted the judges to name ABN Amro as Bank of the Year for 2003.
In response to last year’s continued sluggishness of the European economy and bearish equity markets, ABN Amro underwent intense restructuring, reducing headcount by 6250 and pruning the number of branches in the Netherlands from 800 to 550.
At the same time, the bank managed to defend its market shares and even expanded its share of the savings deposits market. It also signed a major bancassurance deal with insurance firm Delta Lloyd, under which ABN Amro will sell the insurer’s products via its international network.
As part of the restructuring, the bank boosted efficiency and refined its multi-channel approach for its banking services. Its efforts are bearing fruit: its internet-based savings account, for example, accounted for 50% of the net volume growth in savings deposits.
All these measures helped the bank eke out a moderate rise in net profit and improve its ROE for 2002 to 22.6% from 20.5% in 2001. Its cost-to-income ratio also improved slightly to 70.1%.
“The year 2002 has been both difficult and gratifying for us in the Netherlands,” said Floris Deckers CEO of the Business Unit Netherlands. “We continued to restructure our Dutch operations to deliver a better service in a more efficient way. We also managed to turn the bank around in the Netherlands.
“I feel that this has been vindicated by receiving the award from The Banker – it honours the fact that we took the right steps at the right time. We should continue to improve our service to our clients, to improve our results through a higher revenue base. That is in the hands of our staff. But I am confident that they will meet this challenge because they were the key driver behind this award.”
