As Russia’s banking sector seeks new, customer-focused strategies to win over clients in an increasingly competitive market, Russian startups are close at hand and ready to support such strategies with an array of advanced IT solutions.
In St. Petersburg on May 31st, eighteen startups, all residents of the Ingria business incubator, made a series of project pitches for a group of executives from eleven leading Russian and Swedish banks along with three investment funds.
The technologies presented ranged from mobile payment solutions and software for brokers, to personal financial management (PFM) tools and loan application processing automation. Other projects offered solutions for banking industry human resources recruiters and personal data security experts.
Some of the startups pitched ideas for the B2C segment with a specific focus on PFM apps and feedback services. These included, for example, CoinKeeper, a project designed to help people manage their finances. The service is marketed as a ‘safety net’ for cash lovers who do not always keep track of how much they spend and are not sure what their budgets should be.
Another project, Zen-Money, lends a hand to users of bank cards, offering them automated account management, advice on banking products, and other services.
Checkback focuses on developing a cloud-based complaint registry, a dedicated channel for mobile complaints and suggestions with the added function of personal data anonymity for clients.
Confetee, a startup specializing in teleconferencing, has come up with a cloud-based voice service to collect customer feedback. Banking clients can expect the tool to help them put together highly customized offers and promptly respond to inquiries.
From investment risk assessment to loan program selection
Bankers were also presented with an array of B2B projects. In the SME segment, Kassa.bz has a service that helps automate sales of a range of digital goods, including tickets. Unicom enables realtors, car retailers, and insurance brokers to offer their customers select loan programs.
Other startups presented services specifically tailored to streamlining banking operations. These included AxiCredit, a cloud-based solution that helps bankers make lending decisions and optimize credit scoring; Pythia, with its counter-fraud transaction analysis technology based on algorithms developed in robotics; ZeFinance.ru, a service that enables the assessment of investment risks; IPI.Manager, which offers banks comprehensive task management software; and Fintops, a headhunting service for financial market specialists.
“Today’s banking business is moving towards personalization and customer orientation where service is the fundamental issue. Therefore CRM efforts or feedback-focused solutions are very interesting; in a highly competitive market, it’s the swiftness of responses that determines whether a customer stays with us or leaves,” said Svetlana Pozdeeva, the head of regional operations at Probusinessbank, in a comment about the Ingria pitches.
