Survey: Only 2% of bank customers in Armenia make use of remote banking

According to the survey findings presented by Artashes Shaboyan, Senior Research Specialist at Ameria Management Advisory Services, 57% of Armenia's population make use of banking services, with only 5% of them frequently paying for shopping with cards. Only 3% of the bank customers do shopping on-line and 80% of such operations are acquisition of goods from abroad. Only 3 out of the 21 banks in Armenia provide no remote services. 

 

As regards the indices of Ameriabank, which is a member of Ameria Group, Shaboyan pointed out that as of 1 January 2015, only 17.5% of the personal customers made use of on-line banking, with only 3.5% of them being active and regular users. "This figure is almost twice as high as the country indicator, but is much lower than the indices of the developed countries," he said. He also noted that Ameriabank's corporate customers are most active users of internet banking. In particular, 24.2% of them used such services, with 23.2% being active 

and regular users. 

 

The survey has also revealed that remote banking is most popular in Yerevan and least popular in Vanadzor (Lori province). "This means that the popularity of on-line banking directly depends on the household incomes. The higher the incomes the more inclined the customers are to use on-line banking," said Arman Barseghyan, Retail Banking Director at Ameriabank.        

 

Nevertheless, he thinks that development of on-line banking in Armenia has no alternatives. It is just a matter of time, because such service channels allow the customers to optimize their expenses and save their time and they also enable the banks to reduce their expenses and, consequently, to improve the tariffs of services and enhance the efficiency of their activities in general. "But this does not mean that the branches will disappear or lose their significance; they will simply reduce their operation functions in the course of time and will be reformatted into advisory centers, where each customer will be provided with individual services", said Barseghyan.  

 

When asked how promising the development of remote services is in Armenia amid the developed branch networks, Mihran Muradyan, Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management at HSBC Bank Armenia, replied that the future of the banks belongs to the digital technologies. "One of the strategic tasks of our bank is to develop and introduce digital banking technologies, which fully exclude the use of the human resource," he said.