Transition Equa bank under Raiffeisenbank Clients will not know it fully until September or October 2022. Although the merger will officially take place on January 1, it may not change much for them at first glance – except for the merger of the deposit insurance limit.
This follows from the announcement by Equa published among the documents on its website in order to comply with the legal obligation to publish it at least one month before the date of the merger. It should inform clients about it in the near future.
The merger will take place on January 1, 2022. Equa bank will cease to exist and all its assets will be transferred to Raiffeisenbank – including all rights and obligations under contracts concluded with clients. From the point of view of current Equa bank clients, contracts will be transferred automatically, they do not have to take any steps. The contracts – the obligations and obligations of the bank and the client – will continue to apply, be it current accounts, savings, consumer loans, mortgages, investments, insurance and other products.
“The merger will not affect the validity or content of client agreements concluded with Equa bank or Raiffeisenbank. The merger will only change the counterparty, from Equa bank to Raiffeisenbank. Should further changes occur, clients will be notified and implemented in good time in accordance with the client agreements and relevant legislation, ”the banks emphasize in the joint announcement.
The current systems and service channels to which they are accustomed will remain available to existing Equa bank clients for approximately nine months – Internet and mobile banking, payment cards, contact centers, branches and more. Clients also retain their current access data, including ePIN, as well as their current account number, including bank code.
The final integration will take place during September and October 2022, and the bank will inform clients about its exact date in advance. As part of the integration, the Equa bank brand will be merged under Raiffeisenbank, client and product data will be migrated and service channels (Internet and mobile banking, contact centers and branches, etc.) will be merged.
The connection has an impact on statutory deposit insurance. The limit of 100 thousand euros (currently just over 2.5 million crowns) will start to be calculated together. If you have money in both previously separate banks and would get more than the insured 100,000 euros with their total amount, you can transfer some of them elsewhere.
In connection with the New Year’s merger, clients can transfer or withdraw any uninsured deposit without any penalties. This applies in particular to term deposits, so exceptionally there will be no penalty for early withdrawal (4% of the principal). Equa bank clients can exercise such a right within three months of the official publication of the announcement on the website – that is, until approximately the end of February.
The insurance limit is calculated for all deposits of one client in one bank, not for all deposits of one client in different banks. When someone divides 500 thousand euros evenly into five different banks, they have the entire amount insured (not counting any interest).
According to information from the Poney.cz website, which is not part of the official announcement, the bank expects that Equa bank clients should remain in the current bank account numbers before the slash even after the transition to Raiffka – the “only” bank code would change from 6100 to 5500 The bank would deal with possible duplications individually. At the same time, it will probably offer its clients to arrange a change for them, for example with their employer.
The agreement on the planned merger was announced by banks in February this year. They obtained the necessary approval from the Office for the Protection of Competition in mid-April, and a month later the Czech National Bank gave the green light. The transaction was settled on 1 July this year: the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), to which the Czech Raiffeisenbank belongs, paid the purchase price to the British fund AnaCap (or Equa Group Limited), the current owner of Equa bank, and the shares were transferred – Raiffeisenbank became the sole shareholder of Equa bank. However, both banks continue to act as separate legal entities – this will not change until the merger on 1 January 2022.
Raiffeisenbank has previously announced that it does not plan to change Equa’s clients so that they have no reason to move elsewhere. “Our intention is to offer everyone the best of both banks, so that clients are on the same ship, so to speak. That is why we have already introduced free withdrawals from ATMs in the world, which Equa has for its clients, “said Raiffeisenbank spokeswoman Petra Kopecká in April.
“Raiffeisenbank will gradually use the best of both banks during 2022. Most of the “tweaks” from the Equa offer will be integrated into the RB offer in the future. However, we are still working together on the final form of the product offer, so I cannot provide specific information at this time. Clients can definitely look forward to improved online banking services, a larger branch network and maintaining the popular benefits of a current account. For example, we will offer Equa clients an extension of services in the form of the possibility of setting up managers for bank accounts or issuing another payment card to the account, ”adds Equa bank spokeswoman Kateřina Petko.
However, Raiffeisenbank will not take over a function that shows clients the name of the payee’s account before confirming the payment order. “However, to some extent we were inspired by Equa bank. When entering a payment in mobile banking, we can mention the “most frequent recipients”, when the mobile application now offers the user the most common counter-accounts to the first step of domestic payment, where one-off payments go. There is no need to create payment patterns, but the application itself will suggest which recipients the user could choose. Then, of course, it pre-fills the account number and thus simplifies entering frequently recurring payments, “explains Kopecká.
Equa is one of the smaller ones bankswhich have gained popularity in recent years mainly due to current accounts without fees and more advantageous savings accounts. It has been operating on the domestic market since 2011, when the British AnaCap took over the Czech branch of the Italian Banco Popolare. It became part of the then wave of new small banks, which tried to establish themselves with simple, fast and cheap services.
Raiffeisenbank has been providing banking services in the Czech Republic since 1993. By taking over Equa bank, it will further strengthen its number of clients. So far, according to the latest published figures, it had over 820 thousand (excluding the building society), Equa over 500 thousand. It would be the sum of them the fourth largest bank in the Czech Republic after Česká spořitelna, ČSOB and Komerční banka – before Moneta (without building society), Fio and Air Bank.
We added additional details during the day.
