Orange Bank reorganises to better deploy internationally

Now the sole shareholder of Orange Bank, the Orange group is currently seeking to rapidly transform its banking subsidiary. With the "One Bank" project, the group is reportedly modernising its IT platform, but also setting up an organisation designed to arm its banking subsidiary to make it a European and... profitable player.

 FACTS

• According to internal sources, Orange has launched a vast project to reorganise its banking activities. The main objective? To create economies of scale to improve its economic profile. Indeed, since its launch in 2017 in France, the mobile bank has accumulated nearly €800 million in net losses.

• With this savings plan, Orange hopes that its mobile bank will reach financial balance by the end of 2024. To achieve this, the operator is now counting on a strategic shift. Firstly, by buying out Groupama's minority share (21.7% of Orange Bank) last October. But also and above all, by preparing a profound reorganisation of the mobile banking activities.

• Orange is thus planning a two-stage action plan:

  • modernisation and simplification of its IT platform

  • acceleration of the international deployment

  • In concrete terms, several cost-saving measures are envisaged:

  • merging Orange Bank France with its Spanish branch, in order to pool their back-office, IT and risk management activities

  • grafting the mobile banking activities onto the telecom activities in Poland, Belgium and Romania, for example.

• The code name of the project, still unofficial, is "One Bank". It has already been submitted to the mobile bank's staff representatives, as it will lead to a reduction in the workforce (by 30 people out of the 820 currently employed by Orange Bank). This will result in savings of around thirty million euros.  

CHALLENGES

• Accentuating synergies between the telecoms business and the bank. The simplification of the shareholding of its banking subsidiary allows Orange to accelerate this major project. The operator will first be able to develop a new IT platform for its bank; the old platform, inherited from Groupama Banque, was often blamed for the difficulties Orange Bank experienced at its launch and Groupama did not want to invest more in modernising it. From now on, Orange will also be able to accentuate the synergies between banking and telecoms, through cross-selling (telephone financing, banking packages including telephony, etc.); hence the idea of bringing the activities together in certain countries.

• The objective of this reorganisation is also to industrialise the bank's capacity to launch new financial services in new countries; for this purpose, a development team would be centralised in this new mutualised structure, making it possible to open new subsidiaries in Europe more quickly.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• Orange had studied the possibility of bringing BNP Paribas into the capital of Orange Bank last year. The operator finally abandoned the idea of a co-investor. Orange Bank will therefore be in direct competition with other European digital banking players, such as Nickel.

• Orange Bank in figures :

• 1.4 million individual customers in France and Spain, most of whom have chosen the bank's paid-for offer, which validates its strategic shift away from free banking.

• 300,000 professional customers, a priority segment since the acquisition of Anytime.

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