Day 9

Well, hello! It's hard to believe that this time tomorrow will mark two-thirds of the way through our trip. What an amazing, yet fast, experience! To end our visit here in Vienna, we visited BAWAG P.S.K.. Which is a financial institution that was founded in 1883 by Franz Joseph I. Back in 1883, BAWAG P.S.K. was not combined, it was only P.S.K.. In 1884, Georg Coch became P.S.K.'s first CEO and came up with the idea of doing non-cash transactions. During WWI, the bank decided to shut it's doors and didn't pick up business again until after the war was over. It wasn't until 1922 when BAWAG was founded. It took five years total to merge the two seperate banks. In 1996, P.S.K. turned into a corporation. In 2006, a shareholder of 100% of the bank's stocks sold to Cerbirus, an American financial institution based out of New York City.

Just as with many of our banks back home, BAWAG P.S.K. took a huge hit in the economic crises a couple of years ago. They received 45 billion Euros, $61,159,883,959 USD, to help recover. In a few short years, this corporation was able to bounce out of their debt and today claim that they are 100% debt free. The building that we visited today was first opened in 1906, with 17,000 nails hammered into it's walls on the outside. Today, it stands as the headquarters for their 477 branches across the Austrian country. Customer banking, efficiency, capital and liquidity, and equity returns are four factors in Austrian Banking. Today, this financial institution is not focused on person-to-person banking. Having worked at the same bank for over 6 years now, I couldn't imagine doing financial business without someone their to face me and answer my questions. They label themselves as the "easy bank" but to me, it doesn't sound to easy. I think of my grandparents who are not tech smart, trying to figure out how to use their mobile banking app. I prefer person-to-person banking much more, but then again in this country "easy banking" might be the solution to their problems.

There were quite a few interesting facts given to us today. A float rate mortgage in Austria is 1.7% while in the US it is 4.25%. There are special taxes a bank has to pay which result to 25 million Euros per year which decreases the equity returns on shareholders. For a bank account, you have to pay to keep the account open. At Wells Bank, my workplace, we offer free checking where all you have to do is deposit $50 into the account to open it and there are no service charges. It doesn't matter the balance of your account at Wells Bank but at BAWAG P.S.K. you are charged quarterly to keep the account open as well as the ending balance fine if it is not up to their standards. In the US, we would call those types of accounts Money Markets or Interest Bearing accounts. Austria allows one type of abnk account to be opened free of charge and that is savings accounts. I really enjoyed learning about the differences in my workplace compared to this place. It was also neat to see the old deposit slips, safety deposit boxes, and log accounts. Today was my favorite business visit this entire trip!

Account Logs: What the bank used to keep track of Bank Account Records for each customer

                                                      An old Check from the 1880's

                                                                 Teller stations

By: Ashley Burnett