The issues of Fidelis and Tezaur government bonds do not necessarily reduce the savings from bank deposits, but reflect the maturing of the financial market and the increase in appetite for investments, says Ionuţ Lianu, head of the CEC Bank Treasury. According to him, saving and investing meet different needs, and as the incomes of the population increase, more and more Romanians begin to migrate from traditional forms of investment, such as real estate or deposits, to financial instruments such as government securities and shares. «As banks, we try to position ourselves in the savings segment, in the sense that we offer everything a client could want in terms of savings. On the other hand, when we are talking about 10-year bonds or stocks, there is clearly an investment component here. It seems to us that the market is developing somewhat separately, in the sense that the savings needs are there and will continue to be there. But as the population becomes richer, people start to have much more investment needs», said Ionuţ Lianu at the ZF Capital Markets Summit 2026.
What else did Ionuţ Lianu say?: ♦ It is a growing trend. I think that any bank basically aims at both components: there is an area that addresses the need to save, this is known and has been part of the banks' activity for decades, but there is also this investment component that is growing very, very quickly. ♦ At the moment, every bank is trying to come up with solutions. For example, we try to come up with applications. The way you make these investments must be very easy and fast: you have the quotes on the screen, you don't need to go to the bank for it, you can trade at any time. This is the experience that has already existed for 10-15 years in the Western markets. And this is exactly what we see coming to us, slowly, slowly. ♦ Practically, as a bank you must be able to offer this component as well, in order to be able to provide the client with the full range of services they might need. After all, you want to keep that customer with you. ♦ Regarding the situation in the Gulf, everyone is waiting for the unblocking of the Persian Gulf. At least that was the talk in the first week. Now everyone is trying to calculate how long this situation will last. The appetite is there. It was supposed to be our year. However, if we look at futures, we see that futures quotes are much lower than spot prices. This means that the international markets are still waiting for a relatively quick resolution of the situation in the Gulf, which for us would be essential, considering the mechanism we were talking about earlier, that of transmission through the price of energy. ♦ Regarding interest rates, the context is different from 2022. We have an economy that, especially on the consumption component, is slowing down. Even if we have inflationary shocks generated by the prices of resources, oil and gas, the trend of the economy was rather stagnant. For this reason, I do not necessarily see the same probability of strong transmission in inflation and subsequently in interest rates. After we get over this oil shock, the situation could be even more favorable. From an interest rate perspective, the potential for interest rate cuts still exists. ♦ What we see on deposits and securities is a rather passive behavior of the population, that is, the amounts that have reached maturity tend to be reinvested.
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