A week ago, Poland’s biggest bank was launched. It was founded after Pekao controlled by Italian Unicredit acquired part of Bank BPH with its 1.3m clients and 285 outlets. The remaining outlets, the so called mini-BPH and over half a million clients will soon be acquired by US GE Money.
“The first day of the new Pekao was very good”, Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, Pekao CEO said during a conference after the merger.
Bank’s representatives boasted that only 3,000 clients were scared with the merger and refused to be shifted to Pekao. This is a very small amount because as many as 1.3m people were transferred from BPH to Pekao.
Meanwhile, it is possible that no client will leave Pekao this month. Why? It turns out that many clients of the new giant cannot close their bank accounts. A client from the Warsaw outlet in Klopotowskiego street who did not want to be moved to Pekao experienced it.
“We have a problem with the system. We cannot close the bank account and credit card account. Be patient, please”, he heard from the employees.
“I’ve heard there are problems with logging in but not with closing accounts. This may be a transitional problem caused by IT system”, Robert Moren, Pekao spokesman said.
BPH clients complain in the internet. They fear that fees will be raised.
“Fees are not going to be changed. We take over all commitments of BPH”, Pekao spokesman assured.