MOSCOW: Sberbank , Russia's dominant lender, is planning one of the biggest reinventions in its 179-year history as it seeks to join the likes of Apple and Google in the global pantheon of Big Tech.
The Russian government owns a stake of 50 per cent plus one share in Sberbank, the country's oldest lender with assets of US$401 billion as of August and a market value of about US$67 billion. Sberbank is launching a family of virtual assistants, called Salute, which it said had more of a focus on emotional attachment than Apple's Siri, Hey Google or Amazon's Alexa. It is built into all Sberbank's devices and mobile apps.
"It's strategically important because SmartMarket instruments act as a bridge for the entire market into our ecosystem," said Rafalovsky.The new products will initially be targeted at the Russian market, where Sberbank says it serves almost 100 million active banking clients, though it operates in 17 other countries and the devices could potentially be rolled out abroad at a later date.
However Sberbank's costly tech push could be both risky and challenging, with no guarantees of success in a fragmented and increasingly competitive hardware and software market.
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