RBC DAILY. Moscow Bank for Reconstruction and Development is making preparations to change its strategy. Fr om a captive bank of AFK Sistema MBRD wants to turn into a retail player, intending to get renamed MTS-Bank, RBC daily learned.
As MBRD deputy management board chairwoman Elena Voronina told the paper, the bank plans to increase the portion of retail business in its balance sheet from the current 20% to 60%. The lending institution specified that a rebranding campaign is supposed to be carried out next year, but did not reveal its new corporate name. Sources on the banking market told the newspaper that MBRD would be renamed MTS-Bank. Mobile provider MTS, like the bank, is owned by Vladimir Evtushenkov’s AFK Sistema (the corporation holds over 50% of MTS shares, with the remaining shares listed on an exchange).
While rolling out its retail business MBRD will focus mainly on card activities. In October at all MTS outlets households can receive MTS Dengi cards using which they will be able to consume all the banking services provided by MBRD. Currently, a pilot project is carried out at 2,000 points of sale. MTS Dengi cards can be used not only via ATMs, but also through mobile Internet and online bank solutions. The lending institution plans to operate on agency terms at MTS’s sales offices. In the MTS Dengi project the bank focuses on remote services, therefore the cellular provider’s outlets will be used to a large extent as points of sale rather than mini offices. MTS said that in cooperation with MBRD it has been carrying out the MTS Dengi project wh ereby the mobile operator promotes credit cards under its brand name. “Longer term, the range of financial services could be widened," MTS does not rule out.
“By 2016 the target is to issue around 15 mln MTS Dengi cards," Voronina said. According to her, as of today the bank issued around 1 mln cards (outside the project), with about 400,000 cards in use.
Along with the introduction of the credit card project MTS-Bank will continue operations in other retail segments. Specifically, this year MBRD relaunched the issue of mortgage loans after relevant operations were scaled down during the crisis. The plan is to increase the portion of mortgage loans in the household portfolio to 60% by 2016. “Currently, the amount of mortgage loans maintained on the bank’s balance sheet is modest, as we did not operate on the mortgage market for a while, and the bank sold high-quality loans," Voronina pointed out.
Today there is another bank in Russia that provides its services at mobile phone shops, Svyaznoy Bank. It also focuses on a universal plastic card. “Through our presence in Svyaznoy’s 2,400 mobile phone shops we gained access to customers all across Russia within a short period of time," Svyaznoy Bank deputy management board chairman Evgeny Davydovich noted.
