Best bank 2025: United Bulgarian Bank
United Bulgarian Bank’s merger with KBC Bank Bulgaria stood out as a landmark success.
Executed on schedule and without service interruptions, the integration aligned technology, products and a workforce of several thousand people. The new institution emerged as the country’s largest lender, with the broadest branch network and an unrivalled mix of banking and insurance solutions – proof that a complex corporate fusion can be both technically flawless and culturally unifying.
The bank demonstrated exemplary financial performance. By following its F1rst strategy and capturing merger synergies, it achieved its highest‐ever profitability while keeping costs firmly under control. Lending to companies and households expanded faster than the market, and its balance sheet now carries the nation’s most substantial securities portfolio. Such results have solidified the bank’s reputation as Bulgaria’s primary engine of growth even amid economic volatility.
Despite the heavy workload of integration, the bank rolled out a stream of mobile-app enhancements and maintained the country’s top position in Deloitte’s digital-banking benchmark. Its flagship AI assistant, Kate, became the first local voice service able to execute payments confirmed with biometrics, and has already processed thousands of transactions. Additional advances – push-token signing, open APIs for enterprise resource planning systems, eye-tracking accessibility, and a fully digital mortgage pre-approval journey – have lifted app ratings.
The lender’s green finance programmes channel significant funding towards low-carbon projects, raising the share of renewable power in the energy book and sharply cutting emissions intensity. The bank’s in-house Green0meter platform helps small and mid-sized firms measure and improve their ESG footprint, complemented by an expanded Agro Carbon Calculator and sector-specific conferences.
A customer-centric approach was at the epicentre of the bank’s strategy. High employee engagement, honed through the I Will Take Care programme and PEARL+ values, supported market-leading satisfaction scores in retail and corporate banking. Personalised digital journeys, an integrated bank-insurance model, and beyond-banking extras such as electric-vehicle-charger maps foster deep loyalty, and drove strong growth in loans and deposits across every segment.
Best digital bank 2025: UniCredit Bulbank
UniCredit Bulbank’s digital transformation was most visible in the scale and intensity of retail adoption.
By the close of 2024, the bank counted 760,000 digital active users, 720,000 of them on mobile – around 70 % of all customers. Mobile transactions reached more than 1.2 million a month, rising 30% year-on-year, while payment volumes climbed 40%. Digitised card usage expanded even faster, up 84%, and a record 115% jump in fully end-to-end digital sales demonstrated that everyday banking is now executed primarily digitally rather than in the branch.
Rapid customer take-up has been underpinned by a steady flow of fully remote product journeys. UniCredit Bulbank’s app was strengthened by an in-app investment plan that lets customers schedule regular fund purchases with providers such as BlackRock and Fidelity. It also piloted a buy-now-pay-later feature that converts qualifying debit-card purchases into small consumer loans signed entirely with a qualified e-signature. Integration with the national Blink instant payment scheme has also made real-time P2P transfers possible through a mobile number, eliminating the need for IBAN entry.
The bank’s Bulbank Online platform has evolved into the country’s most comprehensive digital banking hub in the corporate banking space. Active-user penetration among companies stood at 95%. The platform also processed Lev245 billion ($145 billion) in payments – an 11% annual increase.
The bank offers a range of specialised modules to strengthen its customer-centric capabilities in corporate banking: its trade finance interface now handles about 80% of guarantees and letters of credit, while eFactoring.bg, Bulgaria’s first online factoring platform, serves almost the entire client base and processes more than 400,000 invoices annually.
UniCredit Bulbank has also widened its reach beyond traditional banking by embedding everyday services directly into Bulbank Mobile. Its My Car dashboard centralises vehicle paperwork and pushes expiry alerts; users can pay traffic fines, municipal taxes and motorway vignettes in a few taps; and real-time notifications provide full merchant and device details for every card transaction.
Best bank for ESG 2025: United Bulgarian Bank
United Bulgarian Bank intensified its sustainable-finance engine in 2024 by launching InvestEU and recovery & resilience facility sustainability guarantee programmes. Together they unlock almost Lev1 billion ($598 million) of preferential lending and guarantees aligned with EU Taxonomy criteria, complementing the bank’s tailored green mortgages, photovoltaic loans and electric-vehicle leases that already exceeded their annual volume targets.
The bank’s own portfolio is shifting rapidly toward clean energy. New funding for photovoltaic parks and low-carbon heating totalled €125 million ($146 million), lifting renewables to 91% of the bank’s energy exposures, while portfolio-level CO₂ intensity fell 81.7% between 2021 and 2024. Internally, 99% of purchased electricity now comes from renewable sources and four on-site solar plants power operations.
Additionally, the bank’s Agro Carbon Emissions Calculator, has produced more than 2,200 farm-level footprints, and its newly introduced Green0meter platform offers SMEs an end-to-end tool for carbon accounting and forthcoming reporting under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
Thought leadership efforts were also a priority. Five sector-specific “ESG in the Bulgarian Economy” forums convened over 340 policymakers, academics and corporates. The bank’s annually refreshed Report to Society – viewed 45% more often than the previous edition – set a transparency benchmark.
Best bank for large corporates 2025: UniCredit Bulbank
UniCredit Bulbank’s corporate banking business ended 2024 with impressive scale and momentum.
Corporate loans expanded by 12.2% year-on-year and now account for 26.8 % of the national market, while revenues from the segment rose 8.6%. The bank serves more than one-fifth of all Bulgarian non-financial corporations and remains the leading deposit‐gatherer, preserving a self-funded balance sheet that supports large clients’ growth plans.
Building on this commercial strength, the bank modernised its digital ecosystem for corporates. Bulbank Online is evolving into a full self-service hub. Combined with heavy automation of underwriting and contract drafting, the bank’s recent technological investments have cut “time-to-cash” for large borrowers to 10 days, with a target of 8.5 days for 2025. Corporate users rewarded the platform with a satisfaction score of 61, widening the lead over the closest competitor by 23 points.
The bank also deepened its role as arranger and adviser on complex transactions. Specialised lending teams financed landmark projects in energy, real estate and leveraged acquisitions, all structured around ESG objectives. The bank’s advisory unit secured mandates across energy, infrastructure and capital markets, co-managing the September 2024 Bulgarian sovereign euro-bond and multiple corporate debt issues.
These commercial advances rest on a robust risk and liquidity framework. The corporate loan book’s non-performing exposure stands at just 3.1% against a sector average 4%, protected by prudent staging and coverage. A CET1 ratio well above regulatory minima and a best-in-class liquidity coverage ratio give the bank the capacity to keep funding large enterprises through shifting cycles and to accelerate Bulgaria’s green transition.
Best bank for customer experience 2025: Fibank
Fibank is recasting customer experience in Bulgaria, fusing reimagined branches, end-to-end digital journeys and purpose-led products into a cohesive push for faster, more inclusive finance.
Fibank’s stand-out advance was its Digital Zone branch model, rolled out in flagship Sofia offices. The redesigned spaces place customers at the centre: self-service terminals allow routine transactions in the My Fibank app, lounges with fluid workstations enable side-by-side consultations, and dedicated areas host tutorials that lift digital financial literacy. Staff retraining is at the core of the concept, making sure that the speed of digital interaction is matched by informed personal support.
Beyond the branch, Fibank has shortened critical digital journeys to a few clicks. In 2024, it introduced Bulgaria’s first fully online loan process, letting individuals apply, receive approval and draw funds without visiting a counter. The bank also became the market’s early mover on instant euro payments, giving Fibank and MyFin users real-time transfers that align local banking with the EU’s Single Euro Payments Area rules and eliminate settlement uncertainty.
Fibank also prioritised investments in everyday convenience propositions that fit customers’ lifestyles. Xiaomi Pay integration expanded its wallet choice for Android users, while bespoke card propositions, including the Mastercard Platinum First Lady targeting female entrepreneurs, showed a commitment to tailored value rather than one-size-fits-all products.
Best bank for consumers 2025: DSK Bank
By translating rapid retail expansion into sector-leading efficiency and a wave of digital-first innovations, DSK Bank has turned scale into standout profitability, sustainability gains and record customer loyalty.
Retail loans climbed to Lev14.1 billion ($8.4 billion), up 22.8% year-on-year, lifting the bank’s household-loan share to 29.3%. Retail deposits rose 13.3% to Lev23 billion, reaching a 24.9% share. Despite this rapid expansion, efficiency stayed exceptional: a cost-to-income ratio of 31.4% comfortably beat the sector average of 38.7%, supporting after-tax profit of Lev976 million and a 20.9% return on equity.
The bank’s most distinctive product advance was arguably its dskhome.bg ecosystem, which now guides customers from property search to final mortgage approval entirely online.
Further enhancements delivered in 2024, most prominently a digital final-approval request and an assisted-journey option that lets staff intervene remotely, removed the need for branch visits while keeping personalised advice at hand, marking a decisive step toward a frictionless home-buying experience.
In everyday payments, DSK’s contactless pay-as-you-go system handled more than 54 million journeys in Sofia, preventing an estimated 32 million tonnes of carbon emissions and eliminating paper tickets. The complementary URBO City mobile app, launched in partnership with Visa, extends secure virtual-POS payments for parking, ticketing and city cards across 25 municipalities, adding further convenience for consumers.
These digital advances rest on a stringent customer-centric culture. Over 65 service-design sprints and an expanded quality-measurement framework pushed the branch net promoter score to 89, the fourth consecutive annual increase.
The lender also broadened access to wealth-building tools, distributing global mutual funds alongside low-fee DSK investment plans that automate regular contributions, enabling mass-market savers to develop diversified portfolios without repeated branch visits.
