Twelve of the 37 banks operating on the domestic market in 2006 went beyond the 1 billion-euro threshold in terms of assets, while another six topped the level of 500 million euros and registered higher or at least 1% market shares.

The banking market last year increased by 46.2% year-on-year, to 50.9 billion euros. At the same time, no less than 17 banks managed to boost their assets at a speedier pace, which implicitly brought them bigger slices of the market.

Despite bankers' frequent talk of the increasingly tougher competition, the banking market allowed for even asset tripling, though starting from a low base. Still, solid increases, of over 50%, were registered even at the top end of the asset ranking, which is pointing to the potential of a market that is still insufficiently covered by banking services. The financial intermediation ratio, namely the weight of loans in GDP, last year hit 25%, from 21.2% in 2005, slightly above the average level registered in the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004.

Asset growth was posted amid a highly aggressive expansion of territorial branch networks, which overall added more than 1,100 branches, for a total of 4,500 branches and offices.

In its third year of presence on the market, Hungary's OTP managed to boost its assets 3.5 times, to 781 billion euros, and leapt to the 14th position on the market, with a market share of 1.5%.

The 4-5% target is far, though, the more so as rapid growth will be increasingly more difficult to sustain, particularly in the context of efficient operations. As a matter of fact, the domestic branch of OTP continued to be in the red and could remain so in 2007, as well. Volksbank, one of the most dynamic banks on the retail lending market, raised its assets 2.7 times, to almost 1.4 billion euros.

Egnatia, Finansbank and Piraeus boasted almost similar