Study: Romanian banks lack Internet transparency

Romanian banks generally suffer from lack of transparency in the online communication, fail to respond to the need for information of journalists and do not offer any information able to calm the public opinion, despite the growing concern among the populace. These are a few of the conclusions reached by the Selenis consulting company, in a study about the corporate communication efficiency for the main 20 Romanian banks.

Conclusions, in brief:

– The corporate presentation sites are at the same level of technology used in the early ’90’s. 19 out of 20 banks don’t have any multimedia kits for the press, nor hyperlinks for press releases.

– Except for one website (Volksbank.ro), all banks have a press releases section, although they aren’t updated in time or do not contain all the releases issued by the institution. Because of the design flaws, most websites don’t allow key-words search.

– The same lack of new technologies affects the real-time informing of interested people – journalists, bloggers, financial analysts, political decision-makers etc.; on the other hand, the PR companies use all channels – RSS feeds, e-mail, SMS etc.;

– Only one website out of 20 (piraeusbank.ro) offers the possibility to subscribe to press release newsletters;

– Also only one website (cec.ro) allows RSS feeds subscription;

– The contact data of the PR officer are generally not available (only 5 cases out of 20);

– There are no logos, pictures of managers and other good practice attributes available on websites. The only photos made available have resolutions too low to print or represent the headquarters of the bank;

– All banks faced image problems in the past year, but only eight offered answers during the crisis. Even those tries to mask the problems under vague titles;

– The quality of information is minimum. The information is incomplete, there are no photos or CV details;

– On the information about company chapter, things look a bit better, with banks reaching 37% of the average conformity with good practice standards.

Top 10 most efficient online communication (average conformity with good practice standards):

1. EXIMBANK – 35.85%

2. CEC Bank – 35.85%

3. PIRAEUS BANK ROMANIA – 32.08%

4. UniCredit Tiriac Bank – 30.19%

5. Credit Europe Bank Romania – 30.19%

6. RBS BANK Romania – 30.19%

7. Raiffeisen Bank – 28.30%

8. Banca Comerciala Carpatica – 26.42%

9. OTP BANK ROMANIA -24.53%

10. Bancpost – 22.64%