Overview of retail financialmarket in vojvodina - multivariate approach

Abstract

Financial market in Serbia has been significantly expanded in the last nine years. In the year 2008 there are 34 banks and neither one of them is standing out as the market leader especially when it comes to the retail market. It is obvious that there is enough space for further expansion of Serbian banking sector. Market share will be the one of the main goals of competition and in the following years the toughest competition among banks will be on the field of retail banking sector. Region of Vojvodina and city of Belgrade are the most developed regions in Serbia, especially when it comes to the development of financial markets. In the January 2008 the survey was conducted and empirical data were gathered about customers preferences of different banks on the retail market in the region of Vojvodina. With use of MDS analysis the retail banking sector in Vojvodina is presented in 3D and 2D MDS spaces. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) belongs to the group of multivariate statistical methods and it is very efficient tool for visual representation of objects and their distances. The main conclusions are that the best positions on the market have the Raifeissen bank, Banca Intesa and Komercijalna Banka. The first dimension in MDS space can be interpreted as the level of client's wages, the second as the number of bank branches, and the third one as the orientation of banks to the retail costumers.