FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - Opening a branch on Saturdays is not taboo for Commerzbank Board Member for Private Customers Thomas Schaufler. "We are a service company. If customer demand for branches to open on Saturdays becomes very high, we would also think about it," the manager, who has been in office for just over a year, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Initially, Commerzbank is trying to fill gaps in its now significantly thinned-out branch network with twelve so-called advisory centers and one at the home base of its online subsidiary Comdirect in Quickborn, Schleswig-Holstein. At these centers, the bank offers advice by telephone from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Friday and from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturdays.

"The extended opening hours at the advice centers are an important first step in the right direction," Schaufler said. "And we will then see from the customers' reactions: How well this is received." The point, he said, is to show customers what is possible at the advisory center. "We're still struggling with coffee, we can't deliver it to the customer's home yet, but we'll offer the same quality of banking service to customers regardless of location," the executive said.

Schaufler calculated that almost 70 percent of the matters for which customers come to branches can be handled online. "As Commerzbank, we have to see that our systems become even simpler, even more convenient, even more self-explanatory, so that customers take advantage of that."

Schaufler emphasized that it was expressly not a matter of discouraging customers from visiting the branch in order to close more locations: "We'd like to convert what we could save in service time into personal advice."

Commerzbank, which had about 1,000 branches nationwide before the pandemic, took a radical turn early last year under new management and decided to downsize its network from 790 to 450 locations at the time. Most recently, it set in motion the closure of another 50 locations.

"At the moment, I feel comfortable with the setup of around 400 stores," Schaufler said. "There can always be adjustments in one direction or another, of course. But that doesn't mean it will always be just fewer stores. It can also go in the other direction selectively."

In the cuts to the branch network that were decided before Schaufler's move from Austria's Erste Group to Commerzbank, the Frankfurt-based institution did not sufficiently take all of its customers with it, in the manager's view. "The question of how many customers we are losing as a result of the restructuring cannot yet be answered conclusively," Schaufler said. "But I can say: we are currently well below the assumptions we anticipated for such a radical restructuring."

By targeting customers waiting in line, the bank hopes to regain trust: "We're using it now to make up for what we weren't able to do during the pandemic: offer support measures and show how online banking works."

The push for digital offerings seen during the pandemic has leveled off again, Schaufler noted. "Currently, the number of branch visits is actually increasing again. We didn't expect that."

Schaufler does not think much of loss-leader offers to attract customers. "I want to score points with Commerzbank with advice and service, not with loss leaders. It's about customers using our services in the long term." According to the latest figures, Commerzbank and Comdirect together serve about eleven million customers. "We will organize growth with what we can offer sustainably," Schaufler said. "A free culture is not sustainable."/ben/DP/zb