OREANDA-NEWS. February 11, 2008. Western Union Financial Services GmbH Company conducted the traditional annual award ceremony of Uzbek commercial banks. The Top Country Teams 2007 awards were presented by the Company's Regional Vice-President for Russia and CIS Jonathan Knaus at the International Business Centre in Tashkent, reported the press-centre of UzPromStroyBank.

Western Union Company entered the Uzbekistan market in 2003. Over the last five years of company's presence on the territory of Uzbekistan its service network of international remittances has grown by more than 1,000 service points.

This would probably be impossible without the efforts of the company's partners in the country – authorized banks. Among them are Capital Bank, National Bank of Uzbekistan for Foreign Economic Activity, Micro-Credit Bank, Trust Bank, Uktam Bank, Uzbekistan-Turkish Bank, Ipoteka Bank, People's Bank, Credit Standard Bank, Turon Bank, Aloka Bank, Universal Bank, Pakhta Bank, Savdogar Bank, Turkiston Bank, Alp Jamol Bank, Ravnak Bank, Parvina Bank, Hamkor Bank, Davr Bank, Asaka Bank, UzPromStroyBank, and Ipak Yuli Bank.

The company's fruitful cooperation with its bank-partners is supported by special programmes aimed at motivating the operator banks towards provision of higher quality international remittance services through the system of Western Union.

The Top Country Teams Programme is an example of such programmes.

This programme based on the principle of intra-national competition has been conducted by Western Union throughout full calendar year and is aimed at raising the quality of services provided by the most active service points of Western Union system of international remittances.

The main function of the programme is to focus the attention on 72 most productive service points, owned by 15 authorised banks functioning on the territory of the Republic of Uzbekistan by motivating their operators towards provision of higher quality client service, which in turn would build customer loyalty and expand the client base.

Every year, as a part of this programme Western Union conducts specialized trainings and sends special informational and test materials allowing the operators of service points participating in the programme to notably improve their skills of working with clients using Western Union international remittance services and make their service points distinctive from the rest by paying special attention to the marketing support of the services. In 2007 the company conducted trainings in Tashkent, Samarkand, Ferghana, and Khiva, where it trained about 190 operators.

At the end of each calendar year, the company invites an independent company that carries out an audit by making the so called "secret visits" and "secret calls" to all service points participating in the programme which allows it to make an objective assessment of the quality level of services provided. The winners of the Top Country Teams Programme are identified though the analysis of the results of this independent audit and estimation of the level of service quality, professionalism in management of the service network, the scale of presence of each individual participant bank in the regions of Uzbekistan, and the volume and growth of the volume of factual money remittances conducted in the corresponding calendar year.

Based on the yearly results the Western Union company awards the winners of the programme in the main and additional nominations considering every service point participating in the programme. It is worth mentioning that the Top Country Teams Programme is conducted by the company not only in the Republic of Uzbekistan, but also in the CIS and Eastern Europe.

During the press conference the representatives of the Western Union Company noted that according to the general results of the audit the service quality has declined by 4 points compared to the results of 2006. Another notable fact is that the quality of service has gone down the most in the city of Tashkent, while the indicators have improved in other regions.

According to the 2007 results the winners of the Top Country Teams quality assessment and reward programme were identified in the following main nominations: the "Best improvement of service quality" – Kokand division of Capital Bank (the main award of the programme – trip to Malta presented to its representatives); the "Best service point in all categories" – a Shahrihan city division (Andijan region) of the National Bank of Uzbekistan for Foreign Economic Activity; the "Best service point by the volume of factually conducted remittances" – Angren city division of Ipoteka Bank; the "Best service point by the growth of remittances volume" – Yangiyul division of Turon Bank; the "Best service point by the service quality" – Urgench city retail services centre (Khorezm region) of Capital Bank.

This year the Western Union Company introduced two additional nominations for the "Highest scale of presence" (winner People's Bank State Commercial Bank – service provided by its more than 200 divisions) and the "Best management of service points network" presented to the partner-bank that manages its network most rationally and productively, and successfully opens new service points thereby expanding the network (the winner – MicroCredit Bank).

The Western Union Company congratulated winners and awarded valuable prizes.

The Western Union Company is the leader in the field of global services of international money remittances. Together with its divisions Orladi Valuta, Vigo and pago Facil, Western Union provides its clients fast, reliable and convenient money transfer services to different parts of the globe. The company operates through its service network including more than 312,000 agent service points located in more than 200 countries and territories.

The company was founded in 1851 when it was recognized as a pioneer in the field of telegraph communication.