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July 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
Meanwhile, the concept of a purely online bank has proven to be successful in Russia. In 2018, Tinkoff Bank reported a record-high net profit growth of 43% to RUB27.1bn ($424mn), explain- ing it by rapid growth in fee and commission income.
"These strong results were driven by both credit and F&C (fee and commission) business lines, as we continued to expand our financial and lifestyle ecosystem, which now serves well over 8mn cus- tomers," Oliver Hughes, Tinkoff Bank CEO, said earlier this year.
Customers have been eager to embrace digital services. In 2018, nearly 60% of Russia's adult population had access to either mobile or online banking, while 45% took advantage of it, accord- ing to the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). Mean- while, the number of mobile users of banking services had tripled over four years.
A recent poll by the state-owned pollster, the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VT- sIOM), revealed that 61% of Russians use digital banking services more often that traditional of-
fline services, another 12% use both equally and only 9% stick to branch offices.
According to a study by Kommersant, the propor- tion of customers using digital services varies greatly from bank to bank, from 20% to 90% of the total customer base.
Digitalisation means Russia is finally following Estonia, the pioneer in digitising banking services, and has already led to a decline in the number
of branch offices. According to the Central Bank, the number of all lenders' branch offices across Russia declined from 43,300 in 2014 to just over 29,700 in early 2019 and is likely to decline by another 15% to 20% in the short term.
Meanwhile, to improve the process of remote customer recognition, Russian lenders have been investing in systems based on recognition of biometric and other data.
The country's largest, state-run lender Sberbank is reportedly developing its own biometric plat- form that would compete with the Central Bank's United Biometric System (EBS).
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