On 22 October the Skolkovo business school hosted a conference entitled “CRM Day”. The event focused on business management at a time of market volatility, increased customer demands, and the emergence and development of new technologies and channels for providing financial services. Yuri Bogdanov, Chairman of the Executive Board of Center-invest Bank, shared his experience and expertise with the conference delegates. He spoke specifically about the bank’s experience of the digital transformation of retail banking.

The conference delegates included: senior executives from Russian and international financial institutions, heads of banks’ retail, risk management and IT departments, and representatives of companies from related business sectors. The experts discussed how they could meet customer expectations despite regulatory restrictions, when customer requirements are changing and financial processes are undergoing digital transformation.

Center-invest Bank demonstrates in practice that automating and optimising business processes and banking technologies is essential for effective growth irrespective of external conditions. Far from being a hindrance, the crisis period was important for growth, as it revealed the inefficiency of a number of processes. The growth period necessitates improvements in terms of the speed of business processes and the development of new services. The 2008-2009 economic crisis, and also the subsequent period of recovery, showed that the classic retail lending processes were not ideal. The increase in NPLs during the crisis, and the increase in loan applications in the growth period, resulted in a higher level of manual work. The only way to address this is through the digital transformation of lending processes.

Thanks to automation, Center-invest Bank now receives as many as 70% of its retail loan applications online, and the number of such applications has tripled since 2012. Using Terrasoft software, we have automated checks, optimised credit application handling, and reduced the amount of manual work. This has halved the time required from receipt of loan applications to issue of loans. Moreover, it has cut labour costs by 30%.

“Center-invest Bank was the first in Russia to offer its customers the option to apply for a loan at an ATM,” Yuri Bogdanov says. “This innovative service is available to customers with a Center-invest Bank payroll card. The usual process of loan application, review, loan decision, and loan issue now takes just one minute. This service is faster than using express and microfinance institutions, and the interest rate is several times lower. Prudent automation is always useful, and we understand its continual progression as continually innovative banking, i.e. transformational banking. This is the formula for any bank in a changing environment.”

The conference delegates approved of Center-invest Bank’s work to increase the financial literacy of young people. The bank’s free online training course “Enterprise for All” (school.centrinvest.ru) was launched in March 2013. To date, 16,500 people have registered on the portal, and 5,800 people have already completed the course and passed the online test. For user convenience, Center-invest Bank has launched an iOS app for the course (Russian language only), which is available through the App Store.