Retail Market

By the end of 2000, the Bank ratified its leadership in the retail market segment, with the highest market share in the system as regards checking account number and amount.
These results were made possi- ble by an aggressive sales management, which enabled a 200% growth in check- ing accounts, a strong presence through advertising and promotion of the Bank’s overall service, a renewed product image, and strengthening of electronic servi-ces. Outstanding among these was the launching of Redcompra. This service enables payment of purchases and consumption made in stores with automatic charge to checking accounts and demand accounts, and recorded a volume of 378,000 transac- tions by Banco de Chile’s customers in only three months. Also noteworthy during the year was the launching of the new Inter-net retail market site, which is being extensively visited by cus-tomers as a result of its attractive design, speed, and multiplicity of services and contents offered.

The period under review was also one of consolidation of the Bank in the young people market segment. To attain this objective, the “Banca Joven Team ”was launched, the products created for this market were optimized, and intensive promotional and sales campaigns were developed for the segment made up of young professionals, university students, and fiancés. In fact, Banco de Chile was again this year the leader regarding loans for postgraduate studies with Corfo financing, with a 37% market share and 1,450 accumulated transactions.

Another important Bank’s goal that was successfully met was growth in automatic account pay-ment services, strengthened this year by processing through the Internet. Banco de Chile is the leader in this business, with the highest number of automatic account payment agreement (PAC) subscribers.

Mortgage loans recorded a 1 percentage point increase in market share during the period August 1999-August 2000, reaching 13.4%. Furthermore, credit card market share increased by 1.0% as regards purchase volume and 1.86% as regards number of primary holder cards. Remarkable in this area was growth in Net. card cards, which are especially designed for purchases on the Internet. This result was positively influenced by the new “Super 2 ” Travel Club promotional campaign and the new GlobalPass card.
On another front, the Bank increased its consumer credit market share by 0.2%,reaching a 9.56% market share by the end of the year, with accumulated placement equivalent to Ch$182 billion. Very important for this result was the sucess of the “Extra Crédito” campaign.

Finally, the participation of banks in consumer market transactions –including pension and compensation payments– continued its growth and consolidation process, reaching more than 260,000 “electronic check” users by year-end, thus leading the market, with 31.0% of demand accounts.