Monday, May 05, 2003

ABN AMRO reports earnings....

See their their press-release. A lot of earnings appear to come from the consumer division, but a closer look reveals that the division leans on an incidental sale for its income growth.



Taking out this sale, one may get the impression that ABN AMRO bank has gone a little too far in cutting cost and closing down branches. The bank has recently stopped providing its consumers with free envelopes to send in payment orders to the bank (actually a product feature that was introduced to compete with the state-owned PCGD-payment services in the 1980s). Also I hear repetitive stories of consumers that have to wait for quite some time in the limited number of remaining bank branches. Soo the operating costs may be lower, but perhaps this is too much at the expense of the customer.