Bucharest, 21 January 2020 – Banca Comercială Română, through Școala de Bani, ended 2019 with over 136,000 graduates of financial education courses in several towns in the country. Through the courses offered by BCR, graduates, 96,000 of which are children and 40,000 are adults, had an opportunity to receive information on how to organize their income, and on how important financial decisions are for each individual’s welfare.

In addition to the workshops held at BCR premises, the trainers of Școala de Bani were present also in:

●       companies and institutions, where they offered workshops to employees;

●       kindergartens, schools, high schools and universities;

●       ten towns of the country, with FLIP caravan;

●       several events and festivals in the country.

In order to draw attention on the need of financial education in Romania and to continue its commitment to create a foundation for the population’s literacy in this area, BCR declared October as the Month of Financial Education, which was closed with a Class of Financial Education, which represented an invitation for each of us to take a break and think of our budgetary decisions and of how they influence our lives. During this class, financial education workshops were held simultaneously across the country, and such workshops were offered by over 1,500 trainers, BCR employees, who included also the company’s CEO, Mr. Sergiu Manea.

Through Școala de Bani, BCR seeks to increase the level of financial knowledge among population of all ages. In a study conducted at a European Union level, Romania ranked last in terms of financial education. Romanians lack basic notions that would help them efficiently manage their personal budget, and this is why such free courses represent a first step to this.

Nicoleta Deliu, Coordinator of the Școala de Bani program, declared: „All financial decisions we make influence our life style to an extremely large extent, and this is why we need to be aware and responsible when it comes to our budget. Financial education is more than a necessity for us, the Romanians, it is a need, the response of which consists of actions under the Școala de Bani program, which has been successfully implemented by us for over 3 years, because we want to improve the lives of all interested individuals”.

Școala de Bani is the widest financial education program of Romania. In the past three years, over 1,000 BCR employees have voluntarily become financial education trainers and succeeded to offer such courses free of charge to approximately 320,000 Romanians – children, young people and adults. Interested persons can apply for such courses by filling in the form available at www.scoaladebani.ro, and also in BCR county branches.

All studies conducted in the past two years, regardless the source, show that Romanians rank last in terms of financial education in Europe. The most recent study conducted by the World Bank at the level of the European Union and presented in the second edition of the 2018 European Money Week placed Romania last among the 127 countries qualified as responses?????, with a percentage of 22%, while the European average is of 55%.

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Banca Comercială Română (BCR), member of Erste Group, is one of the most important financial groups of Romania, and includes universal bank operations (retail, corporate & investment banking, treasury and capital markets), as well as specialized companies in the leasing market, private pensions and housing banks.

BCR offers a full range of financial products and services through a network of 21 business centres and 22 mobile offices dedicated to companies and 431 retail units located in most towns of the country having over 10,000 inhabitants. BCR is bank no. 1 in Romania in the bank transaction market, and its customers benefit from the largest national ATM network – 2,000 ATMs, 15,300 POSs and full Internet banking, Mobile banking, Phone-banking and E-commerce services.

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Erste Group is one of the main providers of financial services of the eastern part of the European Union. A number of 47,700 employees serve 16.2 million customers through 2,500 subsidiaries in 7 countries (Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia). At the end of 2018, Erste Group was holding total assets of EUR 236.8 billion, recorded a net profit of EUR 1.79 billion and had a tier 1 equity common ratio (fully implemented Basel 3) of 13.5%.

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BCR – Corporate Communication

Cătălin Ioniță, e-mail:catalin.ionita@bcr.ro, phone no.: 0740.247.336

This information is available also on our website at: www.bcr.ro

For further details on BCR’s products and services, please use the following contact methods:

InfoBCR

Web: www.bcr.ro

Email: contact.center@bcr.ro

TelVerde: 0800.801.BCR (0800.801.227), which can be dialled free of charge from all national phone networks.