‘The need for the large federal banks to re-brand is often connected with them becoming retail-oriented. Businesses do pay attention to things like brands and logos, but only to a certain extent,’ the Head of Bank Ratings Department of Expert Rating Agency Pavel Samiev commented on the recent consolidation and re-branding trends in today’s banking.

‘A private client, however, wants the brand to be simple and clear; this is a must if you want to attract the mass audience,’ Mr Samiev observed.

‘Re-branding is good for a bank’s development, with most research findings showing that it stimulates expansion of the company’s client base and enhances the customer loyalty into the bargain. Another important challenge behind re-branding is building up the bank’s share of the financial services market,’ he said.

‘It’s actually not true that re-branding is very expensive. Some banks have their re-branding campaigns and strategies developed by their own marketing and advertising experts and only outsource one or two things that need doing. A campaign like this may even fit in the company’s annual advertising budget. One could also use a world-famous advertising agency, which is good publicity in itself,’ Mr Samiev noted.

‘Re-branding is very effective: the market has yet to see an instance of re-branding as a failure; there used to be some problems with Alpha Express, but Alpha Bank simply went back to its old brand very quickly.’