PROVIDENCE – The in-store partnership between Citizens Financial Group Inc. and Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. LLC has proven so successful, the companies have agreed to extend it for another nine years. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“They’ve been a great partner for us,” Robert Keane, a spokesperson for Quincy, Mass.-based Stop & Shop, told Providence Business News today. “We think of them not so much as a tenant in our stores [but] as a business partner … and we look forward to continuing that relationship.”
The deal “extends our partnership with Stop & Shop through 2017, with an option to extend it for another five years,” Mike Jones, New England region spokesman for Citizens, told PBN in a telephone interview today.
“It’s really an affirmation of the great partnership we have with Stop & Shop, and it’s an affirmation of our belief that our in-store model provides value to our customers,” he said. “Obviously, there’s a tremendous convenience … our in-store branches are open seven days a week and offer extended weekday hours.”
“We have 540 in-store locations throughout our footprint and 23 in-stores in Rhode Island,” with Stop & Shop and other retail partners, Jones said.
Those locations have proven a big source of new accounts for Citizens.
Overall, “we generate 30 percent more new checking-account customers in-store,” he said. “Your traditional branches, we have maybe 5,000 customers per week, most of whom are repeat customers. In any given Stop & Shop store, we have 15,000 to 20,000 customers in our lobby, most of whom are potential new customers,” Jones said.
“It’s also a great platform for us to offer value-added promotions,” he said.
“We kicked off a new promotion yesterday that involves us giving away $135,000 in free groceries,” through Stop & Shop and other supermarket partners, Jones said. Any customer who opens a new checking account at one of Citizens’ in-store branches will be entered in a drawing, in mid-May, for a $250 prize. With one prize per location, that amounts to $5,750 in Rhode Island alone.
“We’re also offering a cash-back program, Extra Green,” starting this quarter and continuing indefinitely, Jones said. “Every time a customer who is enrolled in the program – and it’s free of charge … every time they spend $50 or more at Stop & Shop, they automatically receive into their Citizens’ account a certain percentage.” Extra Green participants who have “our premiere account,” Circle Gold Checking with interest, get back 3 percent of their grocery purchase; those with regular Circle Checking get 2 percent; and those with the basic Green Checking get 1 percent, he said. “And that’s Citizens Bank’s money, that’s not customer money.”
Citizens Financial Group Inc. – owned by the U.K.-based Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc – is a $159 billion commercial bank holding company with about 24,500 employees. Its two bank subsidiaries are RBS Citizens NA and Charter One Bank parent Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania. Citizens Financial and its subsidiaries operate more than 1,600 bank branches in 13 states plus non-branch offices in about 40 states. Additional information is available at CitizensBank.com.
The Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. LLC – a subsidiary of Netherlands-based supermarket and food-service giant Ahold, whose U.S. properties also include Giant Food Stores of Landover, Md., and the Peapod online grocery delivery service– has 59,000 employees at its headquarters in Quincy, Mass., distribution center in Freetown, Mass., and 388 stores in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey and Maine. To learn more, visit www.stopandshop.com.
