Business for the sake of people: Russia’s biggest bank Sber sets out key goals

The Sber team has summed up the bank’s results over the last three years and presented its new development strategy as part of Investor Day. The strategy is centred around people and their innermost needs, alongside the development of AI in the interests of society.

Focus on people   

Despite the impact of the pandemic, the reformatting of many businesses and processes in Russia and around the world, international sanctions, asset freezes and the departure of a large number of vendors, Sber has managed to take a powerful leap forward. And this was confirmed by the figures presented during Investor Day.  

The number of retail customers currently stands at 108 million, of which 10 million have signed up in the last three years alone. Sber also serves 3.2 million corporate clients, 500 000 of which have entrusted their assets to the bank during the same period. In the first 10 months of 2023, Sber’s net profit was 1.26 trillion roubles ($13.5 billion).

In addition, the Sber team has achieved a massive breakthrough in deploying AI in many aspects of its work. And the next vital principle that Sber unfailingly follows is to be a trendsetter rather than simply a company that follows them. The bank’s new development program is focused primarily on people, as was described in detail by Herman Gref, Sberbank’s CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, during Investor Day.

“People, their attention, time and money, have long been targets of competition on the market. And we have jumped from having too little information to a surplus of information which is difficult to digest, placing a psychological burden on people and a fear of taking decisions,” Gref noted.

He also stressed that it is important to change the way the bank approaches business processes itself.  

“The business model needs to change. It must be centred around people and their long-term interests rather than their wallets,” said Gref. “AI can become an assistant in processing large quantities of information, setting goals and correctly organising people’s lives.”

Focus on customer’s interests

Further effort will be put into developing the ecosystem of services for individual and corporate clients.   

It is digital channels that will generate most of Sber’s sales – 70% of the total.  

And as far as focusing on the interests of each person is concerned, this is not only about using the latest technology.  

“The transition to a human-centric business model includes a culture of care. AI at the service of caring people helps to take relationships up to a qualitatively new level,” said Kirill Tsarev, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank.

The corporate segment has also become a source of pride for the bank. More and more companies are choosing Sber as their acquirer. There are now more than 800 000 such organisations, making Sberbank No.1 in Europe and No.3 globally in terms of the number of acquiring transactions in 2022.

Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, noted that over the past three years the bank has issued more than 500 000 preferential loans with a total value of around 10 trillion roubles ($109 billion) to companies in various sectors.   

Finance in innovations

Sber’s achievements over recent years are not only about efficient business models, boosting customer numbers and growing profit. The company has also concentrated its efforts on promoting tech solutions, in particular AI.

“We are seeing the rapid development of artificial intelligence, which is shaping a new type of interaction between people and the world around them via an assistant,” said Andrey Belevtsev, Sberbank’s Senior Vice President and СТО.

But according to Belevtsev, we are still only on the road towards strong AI. Big plans are laid for the next generation of neural networks – they will have interactivity and a more sophisticated memory, and start to better understand human wishes.

“We are working to ensure that smart assistants can create personalized customer journeys for each client virtually on the fly,” said Belevtsev. “Over the next three years the speed of data processing will be a priority area for the company.”

But who will actually be implementing all the strategies? The answer is Sber’s 40 000 engineers. Their efforts are aimed at finding a “compromise” between ever more sophisticated technology and accessibility for each customer.

“We have set ourselves the aim of becoming the leader on the Russian IT market by 2026, offering solutions with better offer parameters than those of the vendors who have left the market,” said Belevtsev in summary.

Naturally, technological development remains an important area of investment. According to Taras Skvortsov, Sber’s Head of Finance, this investment had demonstrated its effectiveness over the past three years with an impact of around 800 billion roubles ($8.7 billion) from AI implementation. Sber is also aiming for a record return on equity of over 22% each year for the next three years, as well as distributing 50% if its net profit in dividends to its shareholders.

But despite the continuous development of technology and the economic sphere, and the increase in profit, the customer-centric model which has operated for many years is becoming a thing of the past. The customer is no longer viewed exclusively as a source of income. One of the key customer needs today is successful adaptation to a constantly changing world, and the business needs to take this into account. After all, business is about people.

In his closing remarks, Herman Gref said: “We need to create tools that will meet and surpass the customers’ expectations. We need to learn to treat each of our customers, every human being, as we would treat ourselves. We want to become one of the first human-centric companies, one that will help people to tap their potential and survive amidst today’s overabundance of technology and information.”