About 3,000 customers of the cooperative bank NewB have not made the switch to acquirer VDK Bank. VDK CEO Leen Van den Neste said this on Monday during a press briefing. The rest, 25,000 customers, have since been transferred to VDK products.
The ethical bank NewB failed to raise 40 million euros in additional capital at the end of last year, so it was unable to keep its banking license.
The cooperative then concluded an agreement with the Ghent bank VDK, which will take over the bank customers and thus become active throughout the country. NewB will be the digital agency of VDK Bank in French-speaking Belgium. Via the VDK website, customers will be able to make an appointment with NewB, which will sell VDK products via video calls, among other things.
Between 1 February and 1 April, NewB customers could decide not to go to VDK. So about 3,000 of them have done so. “There are very few. The basis has remained stable,” says Van den Neste. VDK’s customer base is growing to approximately 155,000 customers.
The banking sector has experienced incidents in the US and Switzerland in recent weeks, but Van den Neste wants to reassure new customers. “VDK is almost 97 years old and in that time we have never made a loss, not even in 2008 and 2011. There is a very solid capital base that allows us to continue to grow organically. We reinvest the majority of our savings in Belgium. ”
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