2024
Alfa-Bank bought offices in the Tolstoy Square shopping center in St. Petersburg for billions of rubles
Alfa-Bank in December 2024 acquired 18.4 thousand square meters. m of space in the office and shopping complex "Tolstoy Square" on Leo Tolstoy Street in St. Petersburg from the company "I-Invest." Kommersant got acquainted with such data in January 2025. This became known in mid-January 2025 from the information of the USRN.
According to Kommersant, this purchase made the bank the sole owner of the building, since in November 2024 the credit institution has already acquired 6.6 thousand square meters. m in the same complex for ₽1,1 billion from VTB Bank.
Partner and head of research and consulting at IPG.Estate Valery Trushin estimates the new deal at ₽2,5 -3 billion. Director of the office real estate department of East Real Maya Kharchenko notes the successful location of the business center and the presence of parking, which is especially important for the Petrograd district.
Dmitry Abramov, CEO of the management company of the Jensen Group investment fund, points to the strategic importance of the acquisition, which will protect the bank from the volatility of rental rates, which increased by 30-40% in the second half of 2024.
Director of the Department of Corporate Services and Sales of Maris Nelly Aleinikova predicts that the adaptation of the building for headquarters can take at least three years. Investments in the renovation of the facility can amount to more than ₽100 thousand per square meter.
In 2024, there was an increase in the number of transactions for the acquisition of offices by companies for their own needs. DIY retailer Petrovich bought two buildings with an area of 30 thousand square meters. m on Primorsky Prospekt, and the Lesta Games company became the owner of the Renaissance Pravda business center with an area of 28.1 thousand square meters. m.
According to real estate market experts, the trend of buying offices will continue in 2025, but owners are often not ready to sell objects, counting on a further increase in rental rates.[1]
Alfa-Bank rented 6500 sq. m of offices in St. Petersburg for IT divisions
In July 2024, Alfa-Bank signed a lease agreement for 6,500 square meters of office space in St. Petersburg to accommodate its IT divisions. The new office will be located in the Senator business center on 7 Medikov Avenue.
According to Kommersant, the rental rate could range from ₽2300 to ₽2500 per square meter, including VAT. Experts interviewed by the publication note that when renting such a large office block, a discount of 10-15% is possible.
The choice of location for expanding the staff of Alfa-Bank's IT specialists is considered successful. Near the new office are the St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University "LETI," the office of Huawei and the technopark "Lenpoligrafmash," which creates a favorable environment for attracting highly qualified personnel.
Alfa-Bank is already renting the Senator business center located nearby on Maly Prospekt, Petrograd Side, 87. This arrangement will allow the bank to optimize interaction between departments.
According to statistics, in the first half of 2024, the banking sector occupied 38% of the demand for office premises in St. Petersburg. Major transactions in the local real estate market were also carried out by other financial institutions. T-Bank rented the Ferum II business center with an area of 30 thousand square meters. m on the Sverdlovsk embankment, and Sovcombank leased 8 thousand square meters. m in the complex "Flanders Plaza."
Real estate market experts note that in the first half of 2024, the total volume of transactions with office real estate in St. Petersburg reached 270 thousand square meters. m. At the same time, the total area of free offices in the local market decreased by 27% and amounted to 230 thousand square meters. m.
In 2024, the demand for office space in St. Petersburg may reach a record figure of 400 thousand square meters. m. However, it is expected that the activity of the banking sector in this direction may decrease, since the largest credit institutions, such as Sberbank and VTB, have already satisfied their needs for additional space. [2]
Alfa-Bank bought a business center in the center of Moscow from Expobank for billions of rubles
On November 14, 2024, it became known that Alfa-Bank acquired a business center with a total area of 7.8 thousand square meters. m on Kalanchevskaya street, 29, in the center of Moscow. The deal, which cost ₽2,2 billion, became part of the bank's strategy to expand its own office complex in the area of the Three Stations Square. Read more here.
Purchase of the Rosbank Plaza business center in the center of Moscow
On October 29, 2024, it became known that Alfa-Bank became the owner of the Rosbank Plaza business center in Moscow, located on Masha Poryvaeva Street. The transaction is estimated at ₽14,4 billion and is related to the bank's plans to expand the office network and optimize business processes. Read more here.
2021
Alfa-Bank evicts VKontakte from Singer's house due to low rental price in documents
On September 22, 2021, it became known that Alfa-Bank filed a lawsuit to invalidate the sublease agreements with VKontakte. The credit institution believes that the deal following which the social network occupied a room in the Singer House in the center of St. Petersburg was concluded at a value below the market value. The lease agreement was signed by Andrei Isaev, who was in charge of the building at that time, and later he was accused of embezzling the property of the Baltic Bank. Read more here.
Opening co-working spaces in Sochi for remote employees to combat burnout
At the end of June 2021, Alfa-Bank announced the opening of a co-working space in Sochi for remote employees. Thanks to this initiative, the credit institution intends to help employees fight professional burnout.
 | Most of our employees have been working from home for over a year. Not everyone is comfortable with this, many dream of changing the situation for at least a couple of weeks. Now they can go to Sochi and work from there - with sea air, the beach and picturesque surroundings. Completely different feelings than from the annoying removal from the house, - said the HR director of Alfa-Bank Marat Ismagulov, whose words are quoted by the press service of the organization. |  |
By June 29, 2021, two coworking spaces were opened at Alfa Bank in Sochi - in the Olympic Park and next to the sea station in the city center. Each center has 70 jobs, Wi-Fi, talks for large meetings and Zoom talks for calls, soft corners and electronic lockers for storing personal belongings. To work in co-working spaces, you need to book a place through a corporate mobile application.
In addition to jobs, for "a full reboot and burnout prevention," the bank offers yoga, stretching and zumba classes on the beach, and on weekends - excursions to tea plantations, to Abkhazia and to the sights of Sochi. The company plans to open a winter co-working space for employees at one of the city's ski resorts. The amount of expenses for these projects is not specified.
By the end of June 2021, Alfa-Bank continues to practice a hybrid format of work due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic: some employees work completely remotely, someone combines work in the office and at home. Earlier, the bank opened coworking in Moscow, focused primarily on teamwork.[3]
2020: Opening of the Phygital Office
To Moscow In Maroseyka Street, an office Alfa-Bank appeared, made in accordance with the Phygital concept. Phygital - English from physical and digital, a combination of digital and physical channels. In Phygital offices, customers receive both warm human communication and high-quality digital services. Alfa-Bank announced this on June 16, 2020.
What's new in the Phygital office:
- Biometrics. The office recognizes the client in person (if the client has previously agreed to this). There is no need to look at the camera, it is enough for the client to enter the office, and the system will give the employee all the important information: what the name of the client is, what services the bank uses, what problem he came with, what he may be interested in. Face recognition accuracy - 98%.
- Planning a visit. In the mobile application, you can see the workload of the department and choose the preferred time for the visit - the client will be expected by this time.
- No paper. All documents are signed and stored in a smartphone. Each such office will save up to 10 tons of paper per year.
- There are no employee racks and no separate work area. Employees and customers can choose any convenient place to work in the office space and comfortably resolve all issues.
| | Banks have improved their digital channels in recent years. But the departments remained the same and indistinguishable from each other. At the same time, each major bank tried to open its own "branch of the future" - and all of them remained a kind of showrooms of banking innovations. We presented what bank branches will actually look and work very soon, - said Vladimir Verkhoshinsky, Chief Managing Director of Alfa-Bank. - Following the Phygital office in Maroseyka, we are opening two more branches in Moscow, and in the fall we will begin to scale the experience gained on our network throughout the country. | |
Alfa-Bank's Phygital office is located in Moscow at 10/1 Maroseyka Street. In the coming months, the bank planned to open two more branches of the future: a small office on the Technopark and a flagship office on the Kuznetsk Bridge. In the fall of 2020, Alfa-Bank will begin a gradual transformation of the entire network, which as of June 2020 has 525 offices in Moscow and the regions. Russia
2017: Alfa-Bank transforms IT unit and opens innovation center in Ulyanovsk
In 2017, the organization of the Information Technologies unit Alfa-Bank underwent significant changes. The bank reported on them in the annual report published in the summer of 2018. The bank calls the unification of three IT development departments (development for the Mass Business block, for a retail bank and a corporate bank) into one whole as an important event. Since their merger, the bank has developed uniform standards and approaches to technologies, combined management structures and achieved more effective development management, the report says.
In 2017, developers from Alfa Laboratory also joined the combined developers. Alfa-Bank notes that after joining them, many professionals appeared in the IT team, whose average age is less than 30 years.
| | This is a big advantage for us, because they look at the bank with a fresh look. In addition, Alfa-Lab has added an additional element of teamwork to IT, in which the border between IT and business is erased, when new technologies penetrate business processes, and classic IT with its high quality of development helps to maintain a high level of implementation of those ideas that are created within Alfa Laboratory, "the bank says. | |
Along with the reorganization of development, many IT functions at Alfa-Bank were transferred to business units, and the IT unit now only oversees their implementation. The business is responsible for many operations on its own, and the IT department monitors that the same function does not repeat many times, decides how to combine functions with each other and delegate different elements within the business.
Alfa-Bank notes that the fact that in 2017 the perception of its role within the bank changed, and the IT department began to work according to the rules of the business unit, is of great importance for the work of the IT unit. For example, the practice of production contracts was introduced, within the framework of which the mutual obligations of the IT department and business lines were spelled out. Changes to these contracts were made on a quarterly basis, and the fulfillment of the contracts by the parties was evaluated at the same frequency.
In 2017, Alfa-Bank also created a Center for Operational Innovation in Ulyanovsk. As of mid-2018, it employs a little more than 20 people, told TAdviser in Alfa-Bank. The creation of the center was the result of the start of joint activities of the IT division and the operational unit in the field of robotization. The Robotics Process Automation () team works at the center RPA as a strategic partner of the IT unit. Together they are engaged in the "last mile" - process optimization, robotization, artificial intelligence.
Alfa-Bank Chief Operating Officer Maria Shevchenko explained to TAdviser that the bank's operating center is located in Ulyanovsk, it concentrates many operational functions, which is why it was decided to place the Operational Innovation Center there.
| | Thanks to this, specialists from the Center for Operational Innovation can directly investigate the bank's operational processes, test hypotheses, conduct pilot projects, and so on. In addition, the IT personnel market is well developed in Ulyanovsk - there are many specialized universities, respectively, there is no shortage of the necessary specialists, - said Shevchenko in a conversation with TAdviser. | |
The first results of this team were robotization and the exclusion of human participation from a number of routine operational processes. These include: processing payments, responding to standard requests, processing contract financing transactions, changing customer data on the application, making changes to individuals' loan agreements on their applications, disassembling internal incoming mail and processing payments, the purpose of which is not indicated. The robotization program of the operational unit will last until the end of 2018, upon its completion, more than 30 processes will have to be carried out without human participation.
According to Maria Shevchenko, one of the key areas of work of the Alfa-Bank Operational Innovation Center is machine learning technology. In particular, the center is working to improve the quality of document recognition.
2014: Offices with 24/7 call center access
Since January 2014, Alfa-Bank, in order to expand its branch network and increase convenience for customers, began to open branches of a new format, said Alexey Korovin, head of the Retail Business block of the bank in February.
Among their main differences from ordinary branches are the presence of cards for customers in special boxes right in the operating room in order to reduce the waiting time for their receipt, as well as a new "quick sales" zone, where customers can resolve their issues without waiting for a general queue for specialists.
The new branches will also have an area for confidential transactions with large amounts of money, the ability to independently print out the necessary information by customers in the operating room and a number of other improvements.
One of the elements of the new format of branches will also be an individual self-service area, available to customers 24 hours a day, where you can access your accounts and communicate with call center operators .
As Alexey Korovin explained, such a zone is a built-in niche equipped with a telephone for communication with the operator and a display through which you can access Alfa-Click Internet banking.
"We look and experiment how convenient this option is for the client, since, on the one hand, you can make a call to a call center without entering a bank branch, but from the street using your mobile phone," says Korovin.
The head of Alfa-Bank's Retail Business unit also told TAdviser that the bank plans to open about 80 offices with elements of a new format and will try to equip all of them with niches for round-the-clock communication with operators.
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