After the legal merger of CIBANK JSC, only the new United Bulgarian Bank has remained on the market

There are no changes for the clients of UBB and CIBANK, resulting from the legal merger

Yesterday the legal merger of CIBANK JSC into United Bulgarian Bank AD (UBB) was registered in the Commercial Register. Thus CIBANK has ceased to exist as a separate legal entity and its clients have automatically become clients of UBB. The merger of the two banks is a process which aims at bringing the new, bigger UBB, to the forefront.

„The legal merger of CIBANK into UBB is the next step into the consolidation of the business of the Belgian KBC Group in Bulgaria. We have arranged the processes in such a way so as to enable the almost seamless transformation of the organization in the eyes of clients. The ultimate goal is to make the even bigger bank UBB an exemplary financial partner – with speed, flexibility, attitude, servicing, modernity, dynamics and innovative spirit. The driver of all this is our 3-year strategy for customer service quality. I believe this is going to become visible as early as the current year“, UBB’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Peter Andronov commented.

There will be no changes, affecting the clients of UBB and CIBANK as a result of the legal merger. There is no need to have credit and debit cards reissued either, until expiry of their validity. The terms and conditions on loans, deposits and other products and services are being retained, in accordance with the agreements signed with each of the two banks.

As per the Bulgarian laws, the accounts of all present clients of CIBANK will have IBAN numbers, containing the name of UBB, namely – UBBS. This future change is going to occur after several months. It is purely technical and will not affect client accounts in any manner whatsoever. The former and new IBAN numbers are going to function in parallel by the end of November 2018. All clients will be informed of eventual changes, relevant to them, through their preferred information channels, communicated to the Bank – e-mail, personal letter, telephone call, SMS.

The stage-by-stage collocation of UBB and CIBANK branch networks is going to continue also over the next six months. This process was launched as early as August last year, as since then until now a total of 36 branches have opened their doors for servicing clients of both banks.

Since the beginning of March servicing of UBB clients will be also enabled in all former branches of CIBANK. Thus the Bank’s customer touchpoints will increase by 30% and will number 245 branches throughout Bulgaria.

Over the months to follow the former clients of CIBANK may continue with visiting their familiar bank branches, as well as already collocated ones.

Any up-to-date information, relevant to clients, will be published on the corporate website in an especially dedicated section: https://www.ubb.bg/unitedforyou, while the branch network employees and the Contact Centre officials at 0700 117 17 are ready to answer any queries.

For KBC Group (www.kbc.com)
KBC is an integrated bancassurance group with a variety of channels, which is oriented mainly to individual clients, SMEs and local medium-sized corporate clients. The Group is focused on its main markets in Belgium, certain countries from Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary) as well as Ireland. The Group is present also in other selected countries and regions worldwide. KBC's headquarters is located in Brussels (Belgium). The Group employs over 38 000 people and is registered on Euronext Brussels Stock Exchange (stock symbol - KBC).

KBC Group in Bulgaria
KBC Group is the largest financial group in Bulgaria, offering the full range of financial services – banking, insurance, investment banking, investments in mutual funds, brokerage services and leasing – through its companies UBB, DZI (comprising 2 companies), UBB Interlease (comprising 2 companies), UBB Asset Management, UBB Insurance Broker and UBB Factoring. It has been present on the bancassurance market since 2007, when it acquired DZI and CIBANK.

About UBB
The established in 1992 UBB became part of the Belgian financial group in June 2017. After the merger of CIBANK JSC into it, UBB ranks third on the Bulgarian market with assets of BGN 11 billion. UBB services individuals, SMEs and large corporate clients.
In December 2017 Fitch Rating Agency raised UBB’s long-term rating for a second time within half a year following the bank’s acquisition by the Belgian financial group KBC. Thus, within a couple of months, UBB’s rating has been raised with the unprecedented 7 grades – from ‘B+’, through ‘BBB+’ up to its current highest grade in the 25-year history of United Bulgarian Bank and the Bulgarian banking system  – ‘A-‘.