Austrian Post has officially opened its first postal-financial branch in cooperation with itsfinancial services partner Bawag PSK offering customers a full range of postal and banking services
at over 500 locations in Austria.The prototype in Innsbruck, the capital city of the federal state of Tyrol in western Austria,was already put into operation in mid-December proving the new concept to be successful, thecompany said.
In mid-October 2010, the Austrian postal operator and the Bawag PSK bank initially announced thesetup of the new branch network with the nationwide rollout to be completed by the end of 2012.
As part of this new concept, all Bawag sites will function as fully-equipped branch banks. Theoutlets with the PSK Bank service, which have provided basic financial services until now, will beupgraded and expanded to offer the entire range of Bawag banking services. At the same time, postoffices will also be expanded with the complete service portfolio of Bawag PSK. In the future,customers will thus be able to access all these services at more than 500 offices throughoutAustria, with 280 branches operating in rural areas and 240 in the cities.
The new branch strategy offers advantages to all parties involved. Bawag PSK thus expands itsnetwork of 150 Bawag offices to more than 500 fully-equipped Bawag PSK branches, supplemented withpostal services. At the same time, Austrian Post will expand its presence to 2,000 sites in themedium term and thus secure its post office network in the long run. Customers, particularly inrural areas, will also profit from easy, local-level access to banking and postal services.
Inside the newly designed branch, the banking and postal area are separated from each othermaking it easy for customers to orientate themselves though the colour coding of the two areas. Theopening hours also have been extended from 8 pm to 6 pm on working days.
Austrian Post CEO Georg Pölzl commented: “Together we are stronger! Instead of operating twobranch networks in parallel, we use our common structure and offer Austrians additional advantages.Whoever goes to the post, in future also goes to the bank, and vice versa. Thereby, we areexpanding our product range in a comprehensive way strengthening our branch network sustainably.Our customers will be able to carry out their postal and banking transactions at over 2,000locations in future and profit from high-quality banking services offered by competent financeconsultants at 500 of these locations.”
The two Austrian traditional banks Bawag and PSK merged into the Bawag PSK bank in October2005.
