(June 26 – 09:50 ET) – CIBC Chairman and CEO John Hunkin today announced a strategic alliance with Safeway Inc. to offer electronic banking services to customers in the United States. The services will be branded under the banner, Safeway Select Bank.
CIBC and Safeway will offer a full range of financial services to customers in Sacramento and San Jose, Calif., and Denver, Colo., later this summer. They intendto offer services to Safeway’s customers throughout the western United States through ATMs, telephone call centres, the Internet and in-store pavilions.
“This represents a breakthrough for CIBC,” said Hunkin in a press release. “It’s another step toward our goal to more than double our retail customer base in the next few years, at low cost. It will put us on track to becoming one of the leading players in e-banking in North America.”
“What differentiates our strategy from our competitors is that we combine our industry-leading electronic banking capabilities with some of the most visible and successful retailing brands in North America,” added Hunkin. “We are extremely pleased to create this alliance with Safeway, a powerful brand and one of North America’s largest and fastest growing supermarket chains.”
Hunkin said today’s announcement builds on CIBC’s success in creating President’s Choice Financial services with Loblaw Companies Limited in Canada and, more recently, Marketplace Bank with the Winn-Dixie grocery chain in the southeastern United States.
“The Safeway alliance represents an important growth opportunity for us,” added Hunkin. “We believe a ‘clicks and bricks’ e-banking strategy will prove the most successful in the dot.com world. Our strategy allows us to quickly gain customer acceptance and confidence through trusted brands, allowing us to reach millions of new customers and offer them the powerful combination of Internet and in-store banking.”
-IE Staff