Crédit Commercial de France: Overview

Crédit Commercial de France Delivers Pioneering Online Trading Service
Banks, stockbrokers and other financial services institutions face a tough challenge in today�s fast-moving electronic marketplace. The trend toward electronic banking and stock trading can represent either an opportunity or a threat depending on how well the institutions are able to respond and adapt.

By the end of 2002, there will be 8.3 million online traders in Europe compared with five million in 1999, according to J.P. Morgan. Innovative, entrepreneurial companies that have spotted an opportunity and moved in as start-up businesses will serve many of these new technology savvy traders.

For the older institutions the message is clear: They need to gain a rapid position in the market with products and services of their own or face extinction by their swift young rivals.

Crédit Commercial de France (CCF) has demonstrated its ability to adapt and change over more than a century. In recent years it has continued this tradition by developing a host of new products and services tailored for individual groups of customers.

In each of its three main sectors, retail banking, corporate banking and asset management/private banking, it focuses on segments with strong potential and high profitability. In retail banking, for example, it has 90 percent of its branches in the four geographic regions with the highest growth. In corporate banking and asset management, it specializes in high, value-added segments.

CCF has a relatively small brick-and-mortar network of only around 200 branches. Instead it has opted for multichannel distribution. It has a recognized track record in home banking with 20 percent of retail banking customers regularly using banking services.

Among CCF�s existing online services are Banco PC, France�s most fully featured Internet-based banking service, Elysees-Fonds, an assets management company dedicated to employee savings plans, and CCF Securities, which offers a restricted-access Web site for institutional investors.