November 11 (SeeNews) - Italy's UniCredit Group said on Wednesday its new strategic plan encompasses a higher capital allocation towards its Central and Eastern Europe and Poland (CEE&Poland) region with a target increase of customer loans of 22 billion euro ($23.6 billion) within 2018.
The strategy will be focused on selective customer acquisition both in retail and corporate segments in CEE&Poland, at a pace of 1 million new clients a year within the plan, UniCredit Group said in a statement after its board approved the strategic document.
Similarly to Western Europe, CEE Region will focus on capital light revenues and cross-selling, simplifying and digitalising of customer facing as well as back-office processes, the lender said.
In order to help simplify the structure of the group and strengthen central steering functions, all CEE subsidiaries are planned to be transferred from Bank Austria to UniCredit Holding by the end of 2016, via elimination of the Austrian sub-holding and the subsequent direct shareholding ownership of CEE subsidiaries by UniCredit Holding, while preserving CEE Division know-how.
UniCredit's international network spans 50 markets with more than 8,100 branches and over 146,000 employees. The Group operates in 17 European countries.
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