Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 14
By Azad Hasanli – Trend:
PASHA Bank, the leading corporate bank of Azerbaijan, has introduced a new service for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - tariff packages that offer more convenient and efficient service on cash and settlement operations, Aleksandr Golovko, director of the bank’s SME Department, said in an interview with Trend.
He noted that such practice is actively used in the banking business, for example, in Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and other countries of Eastern and Western Europe.
“Tariff packages will make the work of clients with the bank more convenient and will make it possible to optimize the financial costs for daily banking services,” he said. “Given the novelty of approach for the local market, it is possible to draw an analogy with the services provided by mobile operators, where a subscriber chooses one of several tariff packages, depending on his or her needs. Each package includes a specific list of services and they are grouped in such a way that any entrepreneur can choose the most acceptable option. Each package has its own fixed cost, and this also allows an entrepreneur to plan his or her expenses.”
At this stage, PASHA Bank offers its clients five different tariff packages - Classic, Electron, Business, Active and Premium, he noted, adding that the cost of tariffs starts from 10 Azerbaijani manats per month.
Speaking about tariff differences, Golovko noted that Classic is the simplest and most popular tariff package. This package is suitable for those clients who don’t use banking services actively, he said.
The Electron package offers favorable conditions for those who actively use payments, and the Business package is similar to Classic one, however it differs by the greater volume of operations and is intended for a more developed business, he added.
Entrepreneurs working at the international level and leading import-export operations with other countries can use the Active tariff package, which provides all the options necessary for them, he said. In turn, the Premium tariff package is designed to provide the fullest range of settlement and cash services, Golovko noted.
Working with tariff packages is also advantageous because by having correctly selected a tariff package, customers can save considerable money on settlement and cash services, he added.
“If a client decides to separately use the services that are included, for example, in the Business package, they would cost the client 30 percent more,” he said. “It is obvious that there is significant saving of funds that can be directed to other needs of SMEs. At the same time, customers can freely change the tariff package, when the current volume of services is insufficient for their business.”
All the packages were developed based on the analysis of banking operations of SMEs, PASHA Bank clients and taking into account their needs, Golovko added.
“We conducted a very thorough and in-depth analysis of the business needs of our clients,” he said. “During the development of each package, transactional experience of entrepreneurs and international experience were considered, and the final versions were tested directly by the clients themselves as part of focus groups specially created by us.”
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