A high competition in the Russian banking industry stimulates the financial-lending organizations to search for the new ways of attracting the clients. Meanwhile for some companies the loyalty is actually reduced to rates dumping, other companies are focused on building up of solid relationships with the customers, which process has already turned into the multi-layer, carefully thought out procedure. Thus, the Trade City Bank has become one of the first russian financial entities that are focused on servicing the handicapped people.

A majority of banks think that this business area is unprofitable, and sometimes loss-making: sometimes the borrowers, whose health is far from sound, are incapable of serving the loans granted at the rates of 18-20% per annum and higher. Many handicapped people are reckoned as incapable for work by the law, though a part of them is ready to have jobs, performing the simplest operations. But even in this case there is a risk of the repayment failure: the gained money frequently has to be spent on medical treatment, medicines and rehabilitation procedures. Thus, the banks refer the disabled persons to the high risk borrowers, so the latter encounter difficulties when trying to get the loans.

However, such opinion is inherent not to all the Russian banking market's participants. Thus, in 2013 the Trade City Bank launched the programs to support handicapped people: disabled persons of the first, second and third groups. The loyal tariffs are offered to the customers on many products, at the same time the loan rates for the people of the said category are getting lower, and the deposit rates are getting higher, on the contrary. The chairman of the board of directors of TCB, Sergei Yunin, is sure that in course of time the implementation of projects will give positive results. "Just think it over: 13.5 million handicapped people live in our country. And they are the citizens of our country, just as we are, many of them continue working, therefore they are able to open deposits and use the loans. All we need for it is to have respective arrangements in points of bank products' sale, so that handicapped people could come there and feel as sound visitors, whom we are pleased to see and help," sets forth his view Sergei Yunin.

The four affiliates and about 60 points of the bank products' sale points in TCB work for the idea to attract the handicapped people. In Tver Region, being the motherland of TCB, the number of branches of the entity exceeds the similar figure of Sberbank. "You will hardly find a couple of bank offices in Moscow, which are equipped for serving the disabled persons. We are already building up the essential infrastructure for this purpose in all of our points of sale: ranging from access ramps and to magnifying glass for visually impaired people," informs Sergei Yunin. TCB maps it out to open its branches in all the million cities in Russia, as well as to increase the number of points of service in the capital. "All the new points will be arranged in accordance with the adopted standards. It is our compelling stand: any office of our bank wherever it may be located can be visited by a disabled person, and there will be no difference in service, comfort level or otherwise between the disabled person and ordinary people," emphasizes the chairman of the board of directors of TCB.

In economies of well-developed countries, the banks are excellently equipped for service to the handicapped people: everywhere you can see the access ramps and lifts, the Braille script is provided to duplicate many of the signs and inscriptions, special beacons are installed. Such things are nowhere to be found in Russia, in most of lending entities yet. Still, walk and you shall reach: for example, TCB is almost likely to be followed by other players in the market very soon, and they will see no kind of burden in handicapped people, but rather a group of loyal, quite reliable and responsible customers. It is worth noting the following point: handicapped people do not live in vacuum. They have relatives and friends, whom they might advise the bank, where the disabled are treated with kindness and care. It is well known, the efficiency of word of mouth is very high, sometimes much higher than the productivity of the most large-scale advertising campaign, with involvement of TV, radio, billboards, etc.

The business area as connected with rendering of services to nationals who are handicapped is a rare thing in Russia yet, nevertheless it will be able, in course of time, to attract a larger amount of new customers to the bank. To this point, Sergei Yunin notes: "I am always committed to the principle: the more customers the bank has, the more stable is the bank. One may build up his business serving for a dozen of rich people, but in that case he needs to be ready that one day or another the business might start shaking as some of them may go bankrupt, other change the bank. When it goes about the millions of clients, moreover the loyal and good faith ones, the above risk is reduced almost to zero."

Naturally, the loyalty is reinforced not only by single-time promo campaigns, but a continuous work at the service quality's rising. Sergei Yunin is committed to the grounded position on discussing the issue of the bank employees' training level. "A person who has paid a visit to our office must never face the response: "There is nothing we can help you about, as we do not render this type of service and the product you are interested in is out of our line." It is the highest degree of the lowest proficiency," underlines the chairman of the board of directors of TCB and adds: "Customers get less interested in the price policies of different financial institutions, they tend to pay little attention to the interest rates on loans and deposits, more­over that the latter becomes equalized. So what is below the bottom line? The emotional charge that the customer gets when he arrives at the bank's office is vital."