Raiffeisen Bank announced a 300% surge in the volume of loans granted to small- and medium-sized enterprises in the first five months of the year, compared to the corresponding period of 2006. One of the growth factors was that over 200 of the bank"s employees were trained specifically to deal with SMEs and thus became able to process loan applications faster.
At the moment the bank has a promotional offer of KfW loans for SMEs: (0.5% plus BUBOR / 1 month). One such loan can range between 3,000 EUR and 250,000 EUR and can be accessed by SMEs located in communities with less than 50,000 residents. Raiffeisen has over 130,000 SME customers, 2.2 million retail customers and 5,000 corporate customers. The bank"s network has over 320 branches, 860 ATMs and 6,700 POS.