Salt Bank SA, Romania’s first neobank, attracted 230,000 customers within its first few months of operations, the bank announced following the approval of its interim financial statements by the board of directors, quoted by MSN.com.
Salt Bank, which officially launched on April 4, 2024, reported 100,000 customers created accounts in the initial days of operation. The rapid uptake demonstrated ‘both the appetite of Romanians for a digital only bank and the resilience of the technological platform that scaled up in order to cope with the demand,’ the bank said in a statement posted on the website of the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).
The neobank, fully owned by Romania’s leading financial group Banca Transilvania, was built on the foundations of Idea Bank, which was acquired by Banca Transilvania. Salt means ‘leap’ or ‘jump’ in Romanian.
According to its results statement, Salt Bank reported a loss of RON30.6mn (€6.1mn) for the first half of 2024 at the group level, while the bank itself recorded a loss of RON42.8mn. These losses were attributed to transactions related to portfolio sales and derecognition, as well as an increase in operational expenses associated with building the digital bank.
The bank maintained a net interest margin (NIM) of 2.9% at the bank level and 4% at the group level.
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