Automation of financial service and digitization of sales and service channels is essential if RusAg wants to develop its retail lending business, says Artashes Sivkov, a Deputy Chairman of RusAg’s Board. With multiple digital solutions in place, by 2022 RusAg will be able to halve the time that a brick-and-mortar bank needs to issue a consumer loan or a credit card.
Mr Sivkov says that the key customer relationship targets identified by RusAg include building customer knowledge and a personalized multi-channel communication scheme. The model of a single front-office solution in place at RusAg is one of the components of massive digital transformation. It enables bank employees to process loans and credit cards in a single window, enhancing customer service quality and delivering a sixfold reduction in service time.
‘It is a global digitization, and it impacts a whole raft of processes, external and internal, simply because any cool online has to be supported by cool offline. And offline can also be digital,’ said Mr Sivkov speaking at the conference A Retail Lending Course: Trends and Forecasts 2022.
Next year, RusAg intends to put together several tech solutions (Single Federal Register, My Housing platform, Electronic Registration Software) to create one holistic picture and a convenient multi-channel path for customers and partners.
‘For a retail client it means that when end-to-end, seamless processes between channels are in place by 2022, the average time than a physical branch will need to issue a consumer loan or a credit card will be down by 50%. On average, an account may be opened four times faster, in 7.5 minutes; a deposit, twice as fast, in 8 minutes,’ added Mr Sivkov.
But even with digitization, seen as the starting point for retail lending development, there is, he says, a number of reasons (including social) why keeping a network of physical branches remains essential for being competitive.
‘Digitization is our shared destination. We believe that the future of retail lending is all about having an excellent product that sells efficiently through every sales channel that is available and comfortable to the client. We must remember that the key group looking for consumer loans are people aged 40-55, many of whom prefer going to a bank branch. That is why a physical network, with a varying degree of digital, is a must if you want to be competitive,’ added Mr Sivkov.
RusAg is the core element of Russia’s credit and financial system for agribusiness. Established in 2000, it is the key lender to agricultural companies, one of the largest and most stable domestic banks by assets and capital, with a high reliability rating among the major Russian banks.