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October 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
BCS launches digital lender Sfera
requirements of small enterprises. So, we com- bined all services needed by entrepreneurs in a single interface."
According to Kostenko, about 100,000 legal enti- ties and individual entrepreneurs get registered in Russia every month, but within three years, only 3-4% of them stay in business.
When BCS first observed that trend back in 2016, the bank decided to come up with a new product in a bid to make entrepreneurs' lives easier.
"Today, entrepreneurs have to waste a lot of time on bureaucracy instead of focusing on develop- ing their businesses," Kostenko explains. "Sfera's smart helpers will take care of small enterprises' daily routines."
According to Dmitry Peshnev-Podolsky, BCS Bank's chairman, the launch of Sfera in Septem- ber 2018 was the lender's response to challenges of the digital world.
"The world is changing rapidly, switching to digital," he explains. "So, BCS Bank chose the creation of the digital versatile bank Sfera as a development strategy. Sfera is the first business we are launching as part of execution of our new strategy."
"We believe that the concept of a digital bank operating as a helper in running the business cor- responds with small enterprises' requirements, and we hope to achieve leading positions in this segment," he adds.
In the last couple of years, the digital lender model has been popular in Russia, attracting interest from major players in the finance sector and triggering competition.
The best known lenders operating in that segment are Modulbank, which has been around for four years, as well as Tochka, a digital bank linked to Financial Corporation Otkritie and Qiwi Bank.
Meanwhile, traditional lenders, such as Sberbank and Alfa Bank, have also been stepping up their digital offerings to SMEs.
Another major player in the segment is Tinkoff, which positions itself as the country's leading digital bank, although its main focus is still on private individuals rather than SMEs.
But despite tough competition in the digital bank- ing segment, BCS claims it will offer potential clients features that would create competitive advantages for the new lender.
"Sfera's main difference is that it is not only a bank," says Kostenko. "This is a digital platform with a single interface that combines services for support and growth of small enterprises. The bank is just one of our services, and, in the fu- ture, entrepreneurs will be able to have accounts at other banks while still using Sfera for running their businesses."
According to Kostenko, all services provided by Sfera are linked to each other.
"An entrepreneur creates a contract with the help of the "Secretary" and can immediately send it
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