On August 25, LHV Bank opened a new office on the ground floor of the City Plaza office building in Tallinn and introduced its banking cards.
Having turned from an investment house into a retail bank, the Estonian- capital-based LHV has no intention of establishing a widespread network of offices. Its card holders will be able to draw cash from the ATMs owned by other banks for a 1 euro fee.
Erki Kilu, Chairman of the Management Board of LHV Bank, said that by issuing banking cards, LHV is taking a big step closer to being able to offer day-to-day retail banking services to its customers.
"When we look at our neighbors, we see that there are no countries without nationally owned banks and well-developed local banking sectors," noted Kilu.
"In long-term perspective, Estonia would benefit from the development of a stronger local banking and financial sector, the current weakness of which has also been pointed out by the OECD experts who have visited Estonia," he added.
According to Kilu, LHV aims at becoming the fifth largest bank in Estonia in the next few years, which requires further improvement of the whole scale of banking services.
As a next important step, Kilu wishes to focus on developing and offering private loans.
Sigrid Maasen
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