Center-invest Bank recently participated in the Regional Placement Programme run for the president’s reserve cadre by the Higher School of Public Administration of the Russian Presidential Academy for the National Economy and Public Service. Senior members of Center-invest Bank’s management team delivered lectures on “Regional Experience: Transformational Banking”.
The reserve cadre are individuals who are selected by the Russian Presidential Administration for special training so that they can be fast-tracked into civil servant and company manager positions if required.
Chairman of the Executive Board of Center-invest Bank, Yuri Bogdanov, spoke about the bank’s positive experience of working with federal and municipal government bodies, and its localisation of international best practice in corporate governance, environmental and social responsibility, and risk management complying with Russian and international standards. He also talked about the cutting-edge information technologies used by the bank.
“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. By reducing the amount of manual work, automating and optimising our loan application processes, we have halved the time from receipt of loan applications to issue of loans. Moreover, we have cut labour costs by 30%.”
Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Sergei Smirnov, spoke about the bank’s success in providing finance for small business, energy efficiency projects, agribusiness, and the local population.
“Center-invest Bank was the first in Russia to finance energy efficiency projects. In the last ten years we have lent more than RUB11bn to make companies, organisations, housing, and infrastructure more energy efficient. These projects have reduced СО2 emissions by 147,000 tonnes a year and saved 60,000 hectares of forest. We share our energy efficiency lending experience, approaches and methods with our colleagues from various countries.”
During the presentations, Center-invest Bank also shared its experience of financing start-ups in the real economy. To date, we have provided 415 new entrepreneurs with loans totalling RUB516m.
The reserve cadre also learnt about Center-invest Bank’s success in running educational projects for young people. To date, 18,000 people have signed up for our free online training course “Enterprise for All” (school.centrinvest.ru), and 6,700 people have already completed the course and passed the online test. More than 20,000 students have taken part in the scholarship competition run by Center-invest Bank and the Endowment Fund for Education and Science in the Southern Federal District. And together with Southern Federal University, the bank runs a Financial Literacy Centre for the general public, which has already provided over 8,000 people with free advice on financial issues.