Posts are offering financial services with success, and their share of global retail banking is nearly 20 per cent, as new UPU research shows.
The new study reveals that almost one billion deposit and savings accounts are held by postal financial institutions out of an estimated worldwide total of 5.185 billion. This equals a 19.2-per cent market share.
For a number of Posts in emerging and developing countries, market shares substantially increased from 2004 to 2008. Increases ranged from five to 20 percentage points. Top of the group were Brazil, India and China.
The overall make-up of business revenues has also seen significant change. Postal financial services made up 15 per cent of revenues in 2001; this had risen to almost 22 per cent in 2008 on average. Letterpost used to account for almost 60 per cent of revenues in 2001 on average by country. If the trend recorded from 2001 - 2008 is applied to the period 2009 - 2010, letterpost will represent a little more than 40 per cent of total income.
From 112 operators declaring they offered postal financial services in 2001, 133 Posts now provide the same, representing an increase of 19 per cent. And, while four Posts generated more than half of their postal income from financial services in 2001, 15 achieved at least this outcome in 2008.
The research was authored by José Ansón, the UPU economist, and Joëlle Toledano, a board member of ARCEP, the French communications and postal regulator. The authors presented their results at the Rutgers Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics in Finland on June 5.