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Having introduced a solution for opening an account online at the beginning of last week, Coop Pank has multiplied the growth of its clientele, and the first week after the launch of the solution brought it over 800 new clients.

According to Margus Rink, the chair of the board of Coop Pank, he level of customer activity and initial feedback show that the option of opening an account on the net will noticeably energize competition on the Estonian banking market. “Changing to another bank has never been so and easy for clients: opening an account in Coop Pank will take one a couple of minutes without ever having to come to a branch office in person, and, for the first time, you can do it whenever you please.”

The total number of new customers Coop Pank obtained last week is 805, of whom 529 used the online account opening solution. Since the beginning of the year, 4800 new customers have come to the bank, which means that some under 100 accounts were opened each week before the online option was launched.

At the beginning of last week, Coop Pank Coop Pank became the first bank in Estonia to have launched a platform which allows new customers to open an account in Coop Pank online and start exploring the bank’s services, using their ID card or Mobiil-ID without ever having to come to a branch office in person.

What had prevented banks from implementing similar solutions before was the rules set forth by law, which demanded that a person be identified in a face-to-face setting or by videoconference in the process of opening an account. A law amendment which came into force at the end of last month made the requirements for the identification of resident individuals less strict on banks: now authentication with the ID card or Mobiil-ID will be sufficient for daily banking operations.

To open an account, the customer needs to go through authentication on Coop Pank’s web page by means of using their ID card or Mobiil-ID, fill in a customer data form, choose a service package and sign the contracts electronically. The customer will then immediately be granted access to Coop Pank’s online banking and mobile banking. If the customer has ordered and a bank card, Coop Pank will send it to their home address within a week.

The customers who have opted for the electronic account opening solution will be able to make payments limited to the amount of 15,000 euros per month (up to 10,000 through online banking and up to 5,000 in payments by card). If the customer would like the limit of transactions to be increased, it can be done by coming to one of Coop Pank’s 14 branch offices in person.

As far as legal entities are concerned, their representatives will still have to come to a branch office in person in order to open a bank account and sign the relevant contract.

Coop Pank is a universal bank based on Estonian capital, which aims to put the synergy generated by the interaction of retail business and banking to good use and to bring everyday banking services closer to people’s homes. Coop Pank has 14 branch offices all over Estonia, providing all types of services, daily transactions as well as loans and leasing options included. In addition, the bank is to open banking points of service in Coop stores all over the country.

Its subsidiaries counted in, Coop Pank provides approximately 200 jobs in its headquarters and in fourteen branch offices all over Estonia. Consolidating 19 associations, Coop Eesti has around 350 stores, 80,000 cooperative shareholders and 600,000 loyal customers.