The significant growth prospects of the Greek banks after their consolidation and the disinvestment of the State, the CEO pointed out Piraeus Christos Megalou in a discussion organized by the Bloomberg agency on “The new era of Greek banking” (“The new era for the Greek banking system”). As he stated “we are in a position where we have the liquidity to fund the Greek economy and support the significantly higher than European average growth rate that exists in Greece, while at the same time distributing dividends to shareholders for the first time as we continue to generate excess capital for investment. So they are in an interesting position and of course, the strategic moves they are planning and implementing will pave the way for even stronger banks in the future.”

Responding to a related question, he expressed the opinion that “Greece needs stronger, bigger banks as we see what is happening in Europe”he said and added that “all of us are considering the possibility of investing outside of Greece. In Piraeus we are mainly looking at the asset management sector and of course, we have a digital bank, Snappi, for which we have high expectations, even at the European level. We have already received a full European banking license. It will have no branches. It will be purely digital and will appeal to the needs of the younger generation and anyone who is somewhat digitally savvy, which includes many older men and women. But the most important thing is that we are considering the possibility, as soon as the critical mass increases, to go outside Greece and expand into the Eurozone.”

For her banking union stated that “It is very clear, both from the Letta report and from the Draghi report, that Europe needs a banking union and a capital markets union and that Europe needs to become more competitive. There have been such cases these days with Unicredit being one such and BBVA being another. Apparently, there is a discussion about European cross-border integration. I think this is a good thing, in the end, if the deals go through and, of course, if we manage to make progress on the banking union and the capital markets union, we will have achieved greater efficiency. This will be remarkable for Europe and for European banks, even for the projects outside Greece that Greek banks are considering.”

About the investments and her credit extension noted that “in Greece we are called to face the investment gap. Investments are currently at 15% of GDP, and need to rise to 22% to reach the European average. So anything we can do, any program we can implement that will facilitate investment is welcome. And I also believe that we should devise means to continue the very successful example of the RRF, which as we all remember was started by COVID, but is still helping the European economy to grow, as well as the Greek one.”

He noted that Greek banks are able to finance the need for investment and in particular for Piraeus, he said that “credit expansion is particularly important, given that on the one hand most of our growth occurs in the Greek market and this is naturally linked to the significant increase in GDP in Greece, and on the other hand it contributes to the significant increase in earnings per share, which is equally important . For example”added, “in Piraeus this year we have increased our serviced loans by 10%, in practice by 3 billion euros in 2024, and we expect them to continue to grow in the coming years.”

In particular for housing loans he said that “Piraeus is considering several interesting, even innovative, ideas that it will present to the market in the coming months in order to boost the demand for housing loans. I believe that as interest rates fall, the demand for mortgages will increase, which was missing from the Greek banks’ credit expansion equation.”

For them growth areas of Greek banks stated that “a notable area of ​​growth is bancassurance and asset management. In Greece the penetration of both bancassurance product and asset management is among the lowest in Europe, much lower than Portugal and Spain and much, much lower than Italy. And of course, the UK or France or Germany. So we do a lot in this particular area. We believe there is much more opportunity for growth, and that is healthy growth, because these funds will be directed, at least from the asset management side, primarily back into the Greek economy. One way to deal with the interest rate cycle is to develop bancassurance.”

For her dividend policy he said that “in Piraeus next year, we are increasing the payout ratio to 50%, of course subject to regulatory approval. For many years we have been creating buffers, capital reserves. We now have enough profitability to distribute a significant amount of earnings in dividends and to use in buy-backs as well as investments. These are the things that investors are looking at now, given that Greece’s economy is smoother than in the past.”

For the DTC stated that “with our voluntary action for DTC, we have, in some way, answered one of the few remaining issues that were left open. Of course, it will reset the DTC in the near future. Thus, thanks to the strong position of the bank, we can close this pending issue as well.”

For the Ai noted that “in Piraeus we are investing around 150 million euros in digitization, both in the front end, in contact with the customer, as well as in the back office, code production and all the consequences. To be honest, I’m proud that we’ve been bold enough to make the leap by creating the Snappi digital bank, which will go live in the second quarter of next year.”