At the ZF Bankers Summit 2026, organized by Ziarul Financiar on June 2–4, Banca Transilvania was represented on the second day by Anca Crăciun, Managing Director of Private, Premium Banking, and Retail Products; Tiberiu Moisă, Deputy General Manager of Mid-Corporate and SME; and Bogdan Pleșuvescu, Deputy General Manager.

Statements from the first day of the event can be found here.

Anca Crăciun, Managing Director of Private, Premium Banking, and Retail Products:

• The private banking market is growing rapidly. We have over 6,000 clients, more than 4 billion euros in assets under management, and the minimum account size for private banking is 200,000 euros. These funds come from the growth of private wealth. According to The Wealth Report 2026, conducted by Knight Frank, there has been a 93% increase in Romania over the past five years in the number of ultra-high-net-worth clients—those with assets exceeding $30 million—which is a positive sign for the market. I know this represents the top of the pyramid, but it means the market is growing.
  
  
• We can’t put an exact figure on the potential in Romania, but if we consider the figures that have been cited so far, I think we can estimate there are 50,000 potential customers in the Romanian market.
  
  
• Trust is one of the core values we rely on in our relationship with a private banking client; only then do we discuss returns. It’s about understanding the client’s needs and diversifying our product offerings. Here, we can’t talk about returns for a specific product, but rather for an entire range of products.
  
  
• Having a strong group behind us allows us to offer a full range of solutions, from savings products to ETFs, access to over 30 international stock markets, and more. We provide portfolio diversification to ensure a balanced return, ranging from conservative products to the most complex, higher-risk options.
  
  
• We view our relationship with a client as a long-term commitment, spanning more than a year. It depends heavily on the portfolio structure, the client’s profile, and the liquidity horizon.
  
  
• At BT, more than 60% of private banking clients have portfolios consisting of investment products, which is significant. It means that financial literacy has increased considerably in recent times.
  
  
• The size of the investment varies. I don’t think the size of the account matters. If I look at the BT client, at their profile—that of a successful entrepreneur between the ages of 45 and 60 who is either collecting dividends, has sold their business, or has sold just a portion of their stake in a business—we see that they now have a different level of financial literacy compared to a few years ago and understand the products differently.
  
  
• We are currently in the most promising phase of the Romanian private banking market’s development: passing the baton to the next generation, passing on the legacy. I believe that money is meant to circulate, and the money held in private banking accounts, in turn, generates more money.
  
  
• We view the client as an ecosystem; we take into account both their practical needs and those of their company, and we build the perfect solutions for their current stage of development. So, I don’t think I can say that the money in private banking accounts is necessarily meant to be left as an inheritance, but a mix of inheritance and the creation of new value may be exactly what characterizes the market’s current stage of development.
  
  

Tiberiu Moisă, Deputy General Manager for Mid-Market and SMEs:

• SMEs in Romania continue to secure financing, but the structure of lending is beginning to shift: small and medium-sized enterprises are increasingly turning to working capital loans and less to investment financing, amid economic uncertainties, fiscal consolidation, and geopolitical pressures.
  
  
• As you move toward smaller companies and take a closer look at SME-type businesses, the mindset of entrepreneurs and founders has a much greater influence. We’ve conducted various studies on this topic to better understand behaviors and decision-making processes, and we’ve observed this every time. This mindset carries a lot of weight in investment decisions, much more so than in the case of large companies, which naturally operate with a somewhat longer-term perspective—at least in the medium term—and where budgets or decisions aren’t influenced as much by day-to-day events.
  
  
• The mood today, even though everyone speaks positively about our potential, is nevertheless somber when we speak privately with entrepreneurs. It’s an almost unique combination: our own domestic issues—fiscal consolidation, across-the-board adjustments, which implicitly lead to adjustments in consumption as well—plus international problems and the anxiety generated by the geopolitical context. Emotionally speaking, it’s a pretty tough time for a lot of people.
  
  
• Just as a family adjusts its spending—or as we expect a family to adjust its spending based on its income situation—you should know that a CFO at a very large company does the same. After they’ve just decided to move forward with their investment plans, when he goes home to his family, he’s much more careful and adjusts his spending. A small company does the same. If it feels that this is a time when it needs to be more cautious, to stand on its own two feet, that it cannot afford to make certain risky decisions—because it looks at the resources it has available, looks at its capabilities, and thinks that this is a period to take it easy. This is a form of economic intelligence. It is important to understand that this adaptation is different and that it can be an expression of economic intelligence, each at their own level.
  
  
• All the trends we see today, driven by technology, are complicating the way we interact with one another. In what sense? Before, as an SME, when you took out a loan from a bank, you had the opportunity to talk to an analyst, someone who looked after you, and that’s where you got your first advice on financial education—or, rather, business education. More specifically, the first advice was about what not to do with the money, not necessarily what to do with it, because at the bank you learn what not to do, not necessarily what to do.
  
  
• Today, these interactions are becoming more efficient and more accessible, so they are available to a much wider range of companies, regardless of size. I don’t think we have a problem with the tools themselves, but these interactions that are so valuable to people are disappearing because they are being replaced by digital applications—everything is moving much faster.
  
  
• Even though there are many banks that talk about financial literacy and are making truly commendable efforts in this regard, in reality, financial literacy is something people are learning on their own these days.
  
  

Bogdan Pleșuvescu, Deputy General Manager:

• If it weren’t for the fourth quarter of last year, things would have been looking quite good in terms of NPLs. In Q1, we saw some lingering effects of what happened in Q4, and in certain segments—particularly retail and agriculture—a few companies ran into financial trouble or defaulted, which required intervention through some active structures. In a way, it reminded us of the 2009–2012 period, because there were weeks when the number of companies newly added—whether to insolvency portfolios or restructuring portfolios—reached similar levels.
  
  
• Let us not forget, however, that the courts were on strike for quite some time last summer. As a result, a large number of cases—at least in the areas of preventive composition and insolvency—piled up, and when the courts resumed their work, the number of insolvency cases increased.
  
  
• If we look at the restructuring market in terms of volume—May 2026 versus May 2025—we see an increase in portfolio restructuring volume of approximately 27%, which I would not consider a cause for concern. Given the economic context and developments over the past year, this trend was, to a large extent, to be expected.
  
  
• In the collection sector, there is a trend toward operational efficiency, with significant investment in technology and AI. We are no longer just talking about automation robots, but rather about implementing artificial intelligence processes that anticipate customer behavior, so that we no longer find ourselves in a situation where we make reactive calls, but instead make more preventive calls in the debt collection sector.
  
  
• In the early collection phase, we use AI because some customers naturally tend to be a few days late with their payments. Based on our analysis, it doesn’t make sense to bother those customers with phone calls or messages. So, using our algorithms, we only contact customers where the likelihood of default is higher.