Sister banks Bank J.Van Breda and the Delen Private Bank will launch an app that allows individuals to analyse their assets free of charge and anonymously. Bank de Kremer plans to expand on a strategy of asset management, which started after the acquisition of Antwerp Professional Credit (ABK) by Van Breda.
“The greatest concern of Flemings is whether they will be able to retain their purchasing power and have sufficient cash,” says Mieke Janssens, the Bank de Kremer CEO. The new bank, which is both based on an app and on the former, describes financial planning as its core activity.
A survey among 1,000 Flemings between 38 and 58 years old shows that two out of three Flemish employees need a better perspective of their financial situation at retirement age.
Bank de Kremer hopes to increase people’s knowledge about their pension by providing a free app in which everyone can enter their assets. Via the app, a user gains insight into their current family assets, as well as their pension assets. The app indicates how much money is available per month on the basis of a number of suppositions. The app also provides tips on possible investment strategies.
The ultimate intention, of course, is to have app users become clients of the Bank de Kremer.
“We estimate that 330,000 Flemings will use the app and that 10 to 20 per cent will effectively become customers at Bank de Kremer,” says Janssens.
The entire constellation formed by Bank Delen-Bank J. Van Breda-ABK (Bank de Kremer) is part of the holding company Ackermans & van Haaren. “In Bank de Kremer we put the expertise that J. Van Breda and Bank Delen have at the disposal of everyone who wants it,” says Dirk Wouters, CEO of Bank J. Van Breda.
The study that Bank de Kremer commissioned shows that 69 percent of Flemish working people expect to need €1,811 per person to live comfortably after retiring. The average net pension of the Fleming is €1,200. To provide a monthly supplementary income of €600 for 30 years, you will soon need €200,000 euro of financial capital, "says Paul De Winter, CEO of the Bank Delen.
Bank de Kremer is not a bank with its own license, but simply a division of Bank J.Van Breda. A bit like Fintro is for BNP Paribas Fortis. But where does that name 'de Kremer' come from? There may be some snappy marketers for something in between.
With the help of some smooth marketing, the Bank de Kremer gets its name from Gerard de Kremer, a well-known cartographer from the sixteenth century. He is known by the general public under his Latin name Mercator, the man who used the term atlas for the first time. "Our goal is to map the assets of customers. That's how we came up with the name of one of history’s most famous cartographers,” says Janssens.
Arthur Rubinstein
The Brussels Times
