With the development of the global economy and international trade, the economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia have become increasingly close over the past years. As of 2022, China has been Russia's largest trading partner for 13 consecutive years, and China's investment in Russia has grown rapidly. At the same time, there has also been a pivot of Russian businesses moving toward the East, with the hope to tap new development opportunities in the Chinese market. Recently, Alexander Vedyakhin, the First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, paid a visit to China and accepted an interview, during which he gave a comprehensive introduction on the bank's business development as well as its prospects in China.
Alexander Vedyakhin, the First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank
As the largest bank in Russia, Sberbank has a wide network of 12,600 branches across the country, serving over 98% of total retail customers of the Russian banking industry and more than 3 million business clients out of the overall 7 million companies in Russia.
But this is not the end of the story. This banking giant was establishing another identity as an aggressive technological transformer in the past few years. As Mr. Vedyakhin put it, having foreseen the increasing pressure on the profitability of the banking industry, Sberbank implemented the transformation strategy a few years ago and invested heavily in technology research and development, especially Artificial Intelligence, which has helped the bank to become the number one technology leader in Russia. The bank has actively deployed the latest technological solutions in all its functions to optimize its internal business processes, accelerate the launch of new products and services to customers, and increase profitability. More than that, the bank has turned itself into an ecosystem, providing customers in various industries with the latest technological products and solutions as a major tech supplier.
In the field of AI, Sber is one of the pioneers in Russia and has accumulated rich practical experience in GPT model. The bank trained the Russian-language models ruBERT and ruGPT-2 in 2019. With the help of supercomputer Christofari, ruGPT-3 was trained in 2020. This year, Sber launched a new model, the FRED-T5, which sets a new benchmark in Russian language comprehension. In addition, it has also recently launched GigaChat, the latest neural network model, becoming the first company among Russian technology giants to join the global AI competition. The neural network can answer user questions, write code, and generate various texts and images.
In 2022, Sber launched the first Russian multilingual generative model Kandinsky2.0 (named after a famous Russian painter), which can generate images based on natural language text description. The latest version, Kandinsky2.1 released this year successfully engaged 1 million active users within four days. Sber also launched MedBench last year, which is the first open medical AI platform in Russian. This TOP-3 Doctor's Smart Assistant can propose three most likely diagnoses based on patient descriptions.
Sber's technological exploration goes far beyond AI. The bank currently has more than 10 R&D laboratories, covering a wide range of fields including AI, blockchain, quantum and cloud computing, robotics, cybersecurity, augmented reality/virtual reality, Internet of Things and gamification. Up to now, Sber has launched more than 60 products and solutions based on its research and development achievements.
Mr. Vedyakhin said that the secret of the bank's technological transformation is to be found in its openness toward innovation and a constant adjustment of solutions, processes, developments, and technologies. According to Mr. Vedyakhin, the research and development investment of Sber is comparable to international technology giants. Meanwhile, it is always looking for new breakthrough points, and regularly reviews Sber's development strategy in line with global trends.
Sberbank
As for his outlook on the cooperation between Chinese and Russian businesses, Mr. Vedyakhin believes Russian companies, including Sber, have bright prospects in China. He shared some statistics, for example, from early 2022 to the end of March 2023, a period during which the bank's RMB loans increased by 260 times, while its RMB deposits increased by more than 80 times. Besides, the Chinese yuan has surpassed the US dollar and the euro in trading in Moscow's foreign exchange. The bank forecasts that the volume of RMB transactions through Sber will increase tenfold compared to last year. Mr. Vedyakhin said: "At present, the whole of Russia is gradually turning from the West to the East. It is undoubtedly one of the top priorities for us and our customers to shift our business focus to China. This is reflected in the huge growth in RMB transactions and companies and individuals doing businesses in China as well as the overall interest in the Chinese market."
Mr. Vedyakhin believes there is huge cooperation potential between the bank and its Chinese partners. "Sber will be more than a reliable partner of Chinese banks and enterprises, as well as a window for China to enter the Russian market," he said, "We also look forward to extensive cooperations with Chinese partners in technologies, such as AI, and in the field of ESG." It has become the consensus among global business community that ESG issues are crucial to the sustainable development of enterprises. Sber is a pioneer of responsible finance in Russia and it implements various responsible business practices. The bank is one of the first companies in Russia to have a climate strategy approved as early as 2021, with plans to achieve company-wide carbon neutrality by 2030. In addition, the bank provides ESG products and services in all business areas by continuously improving methods and tools to its clients, including regional governments of Russia. Sber has developed a complete set of ESG solutions for regional governments, Mr. Vedyakhin said, "ESG is actually not a cost and it can bring profits."
