First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank Lev Khasis spoke about it at the Forum of Innovative Financial Technologies in Sochi on 18 October.

How much the banks are capable of protecting customers from such risks is also an advantage that the banks must offer their customers. The market players’ competitiveness ultimately depends on how efficient is the protection that they build. We all understand the scale and variety of those risks, so it is a challenge for all banks to counter them.

I would also like to address the question about “smart offices”. We believe that there is a process all over the world when online companies go offline. They understand that there is no such thing as business that is exclusively digital. The banks must physically interact with their clients in one way or another. And we think that the network of offices is a great asset in this context, but perhaps in the future they will be used slightly different from the way they were used before. Indeed, offices must become smart: they should register the level of customer satisfaction, among other things. There lies a great potential, but there is a great challenge as well: penetration into a person’s emotional realm is considered risky business around the world; it is important not to overstep, not to create the impression that the client is being closely watched by the Big Brother.

Perhaps the issue of privacy clearly may be short-term. The younger generation has a different idea of many things, including the sanctity of their emotional realm. But besides our younger customers, there are those who are very sensitive to the privacy issue. And we must take their sentiment into account.