Chairman of the Board of Sberbank German Gref predicted the impending death of classical banks. He called non-competitive IT infrastructure of the largest Bank of the country and expressed the view that in 5 years all the banks will pass on the digital platform. According to Gref, now many financial institutions are in fact IT companies, but customers still prefer to go to the office.
“We are very proud of its program of centralization of IT systems, how we have made considerable progress in recent years, invested enormous amounts of money. It was the largest and fastest project of centralization of IT infrastructure in the world. But as soon as we built our super data-center, all finished, we came to the conclusion that we are absolutely uncompetitive,” — said the President of Sberbank during a speech at the Gaidar forum at the Ranepa.
The conclusion that the system is uncompetitive, Herman Gref named “a terrible for yourself”. He said that Sberbank is losing the competition to other Russian banks, and IT companies that “take away from him the sweetest piece of the pie”.
Economist Sergei hestanov agreed with the predictions of the Chairman of the Board of Sberbank of the death of classical banks, however, in his opinion, this will not happen so quickly.
“The development of electronic means of payments causes a need of many clients in traditional banking services falls heavily – commented Sergey hestanov. – Going once in online-the Bank, by signing once the documents can take years to make payments, open and close deposits, without visiting the Bank. Accordingly, this trend is very typical and long running in developed countries. In many States, from cash practically abandoned in favor of electronic. Accordingly, this trend will lead to the fact that over time many of the functions of banks will be performed by companies, like Google, Apple is engaged in the development of various IT-services”.
“Moreover, it is highly likely, if this trend will progress, and functions of the credit will be provided to such companies. They are already being implemented. So gradually classic banks really will go out of use. But this is a much longer period than 5 years as on the market there are many conservative people who in principle do not use IT services and their need for service in a classic Bank will continue”, – concluded the economist.
By July 2015, the mobile banking applications used by over 17 million Russians. In Russia mobile banking first appeared in the savings Bank in 2002.
