A bank's competitiveness is to a large extent determined by the price level of its products. To establish this level, one of the two methods can be applied: either the banks' official product offer is compared or market information about the real prices of banking products is collected an analysed.

In a market survey conducted by the Foundation for Banking Education and Research in the SME segment, over 2000 entities have voiced their opinions of 19 banking products (services).

Those referred primarily to the real prices of banking products as observed in the market, and only to a lesser extent to the terms quoted in the official price lists.

Banks should be more concerned with how their pricing is perceived by the market - versus other banks - than with comparisons of official product offers. Such comparisons, it seems, often lead to wrong conclusions about this vital aspect of the banks' competitive ability. One of the common misconceptions is that prices do not differ greatly and that there exists a tendency to mirror each other's pricing.

As the prices of banking products seem to converge, analysts have suggested the growing significance of the non-financial features of the offer in the competition between banks. Some of those features would include the product range and the broadly understood quality of client service. Is that indeed the case? The author has constructed an index of bank product pricing image by combining enterprises' opinions of the price level of the products of the largest banks.

The results seem to indicate, with respect to those banks, that it is their product range and service quality rather which are converging, while the real prices SMEs are charged differ more markedly.