Corporate banking is the Bank’s largest business segment. It includes opening and maintaining current accounts, deposit taking, cash settlement transactions, FX operations (both in UAH and foreign currencies, principally the US dollar and the euro), cash management, corporate financing and consulting, card operations, and payroll services. Until late 2008, the corporate banking segment was actively lending. However, as a result of events beginning in the 4th quarter of 2008, the Bank has suspended corporate lending to new customers, and corporate lending to existing customers has been limited to short-term lending. The Bank has also developed a range of modern credit products (such as long-term financing with the participation of Export Credit Agencies). The Bank services its corporate customers through corporate divisions within the Bank’s standard branches, which cover the major regions of Ukraine.
SME Services
The SME category is the newest business category in the Bank’s corporate banking segment. SME clients receive a range of corporate and retail banking products, optimized to meet the special needs of small and medium sized enterprises, and simplified in order to make them easier to understand.
The Bank previously provided the full range of lending services to its SME customers, including express loans, loan facilities, overdraft facilities, and loans to finance working capital and purchases of property, plant and equipment.
Banking Services for VIP Clients
The Bank has established a VIP client service (“A-club”), which offers individual banking services to a limited number of individual clients, principally high net worth individuals and their family members, including the Alfa Banking Group's shareholders, and senior management of the Bank’s corporate clients. As a result, it is managed as part of the corporate banking segment. A-club offers clients exclusive services, an individualized approach and confidentiality. Each A-club client is assigned a personal manager with extensive banking and financial experience. A-club members are offered the whole range of the Bank’s cash services, an individual tariff-plan for current and deposit accounts, and Visa cards. Due to the lack of funding auto loans, mortgage loans and advances for other needs are currently suspended by the Bank, but are expected to be recommenced once funding becomes available. For customers’ convenience a regional A-Club network is developing. In addition, an A-Club outlet has been opened in February 2009 in the Trade Centre “Arena – city” (located in the centre of Kyiv). In 2009 the Bank is planning to further expand its network of A-club outlets in Kyiv and in the largest cities in Ukraine. The A-club outlets, which are to be opened in Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk, will be designed according to the Bank’s uniform concept and will provide their A-club members with premium-quality standard services.
