The latest analysis of UniCredit Bulbank shows that the number of clients who started making banking operations through their mobile phones on a daily basis increased five times in the last two years.

New technologies have a growing significance in the improvement of people’s financial culture, said Levon Hampartzoumian, CEO of UniCredit Bulbank at the Education & Business Conference: Financial Education for Sustainable Economy, organized by Bulgaria ON AIR Media Group, Bloomberg TV and Investor.Bg Media Group. He explained further that it is mobile phones that make the use of more and more banking services faster and easier for anyone anywhere they are.

The latest analysis of UniCredit Bulbank indicates a fivefold increase over the last two years in terms of number of clients who already make daily banking operations through their mobile phones. With online banking the annual increase in use is 85%.

“There are Bulgarian students in some of the best economic universities in the world, but we have to think about why it is so difficult to motivate them to return to Bulgaria”, said Levon Hampartzoumian. He added that one of the main roles of the financial sector lies in improving the education of those who actually use the financial products.

According to a joint research of Provident and GFK, 62% of the people in Bulgaria do not know what APR is. At the same time nearly half of all respondents would like to improve their financial literacy. According to UniCredit Bulbank’s CEO there should be effort aimed at making financial education more readily available to the majority of the Bulgarian population.

UniCredit Bulbank FOR Education

The investment in education is a high priority for UniCredit Bulbank. The biggest Bulgarian bank works actively to support young people. The bank works jointly with Teach for All Foundation and participates in the Manager for a Day initiative.

Another programme of the bank is My Bank of the Future. It is fulfilled together with the online platform www.kosher.bg and is intended for students from different universities and academic programmes related to banking.

In 2013, in order to meet the specific financial needs of the academic community in Bulgaria, the bank created a series of products called Academic League. One of them – the students’ overdraft – was developed after an idea of participants in My Bank of the Future.

Further to the opportunity to work on projects, UniCredit Bulbank gives a chance to more than 400 students each year to start an internship with the bank. The bank supports also the project “Get Ready 2 Work!”, whose purpose is integration and active employment of youths from disadvantaged social groups in the labor market through successful models of education and labor market inclusion programmes which are already applied in Austria and Germany.

Further information for clients:

UniCredit Bulbank, Call Centre

Phone number: 0700 1 84 84

More information for media:

UniCredit Bulbank, Identity & Communications Department

Viktoria Blajeva, Phone: + 359 2 9264 993, wjlj/ebwjepwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Magdalena Ivanova, Phone: + 359 2 9232 528, nbhebmfob/jwbopwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch