On 18 October 2018, at the FINOPOLIS forum in Sochi, twenty of Russia’s leading financial institutions and banks signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Moscow Exchange to jointly develop the Marketplace project. Center-invest Bank was among the signatories.

The online Marketplace project was initiated by the Bank of Russia in 2017 together with market participants. In June 2018, the Bank of Russia and the Moscow Exchange launched a prototype of the platform, which allowed deposit accounts to be opened and money transferred between banks in test mode.

The online Marketplace will allow individuals located anywhere in the world to view products offered by Russian financial institutions (banks, management companies and insurance companies). They will be able to compare products and purchase them remotely. Customers will have a personal account area where they can view information about all the products that they have purchased via the Marketplace and also manage them remotely.

Center-invest Bank was one of the first financial institutions in Russia to connect to the Marketplace. As part of the prototype, experts from the bank have provided the full transaction cycle for converting customer funds held with one bank into a deposit with another bank. Center-invest Bank is acting as both a donor and recipient bank.

In addition to these technical tasks, Center-invest Bank has also been actively involved in developing and testing business and legal solutions at all stages of the prototyping and piloting of the Marketplace.

"There is a limited number of channels for attracting customers. The Marketplace will allow Center-invest Bank to expand its presence in the market, move closer to the customer, and reduce transaction costs," said Center-invest Bank’s Director of Innovation, Yuri Bogdanov. "We set ourselves ambitious timescales, and as a result we were the bank that was the quickest to connect to the platform — it took us just 2.5 months to develop and successfully test our project."