Unibanco invests US$1.8mn in fee-discount program

Brazil's Unibanco has invested 5mn reais (US$1.8mn) in a fee-discount program for small and mid-sized companies, the bank's retail manager Armando Pompeu told reporters Wednesday. In five years, Brazil's third largest private bank plans to increase by 30% the number of corporate clients with annual sales of 40mn reais or less, reaching 600,000 companies, Pompeu said. The discounts Unibanco will automatically give to all clients in the segment can take fees for services like payrolls and online debt collection to zero, depending on the amount of monthly transactions clients make with the bank. "By giving discounts in services that are essential to these companies, we plan to encourage them to do all their banking with us," Pompeu said. "In addition to scale, we are looking at retail clients payrolls will bring to the bank," he added. Of the 3.6 million new individual clients Unibanco aims to attract in five years, the bank estimates 1-1.2 million will come from payrolls of corporate clients, Pompeu said. By 2006, as many as 250 Unibanco branches will have separate offices to serve the so-called middle market, Pompeu said. Last year Unibanco posted net income of 1bn reais, ROE of 16% and ROA of 1.5%. Consolidated assets totaled 75.4bn reais at year-end 2002, up 35.5% from 2001.