Information technology in VTB Group

Digitalization strategy

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2024

VTB and IIDF investigate Russian fintech

The Accelerator team, in IIDF partnership with the Accelerator VTB , invites early fintechstartups stages, as well as high-tech companies small and medium-sized businesses, to take part in the study of the fintech ecosystem. Russia More. here

Massive DDoS attack from abroad

On July 23-24, 2024, the Russian banking sector was subjected to a massive DDoS attack initiated from abroad. Failures occurred in the work of mobile applications and some services of VTB, Rosbank, Alfa-Bank, Gazprombank and other credit institutions. Read more here

For 3 years, VTB spent 90 billion rubles on import substitution of software

VTB Bank invested 90 billion rubles in import substitution of software (software) from 2021 to 2024. This information was announced in July 2024 by the Deputy President - Chairman of the Board of VTB Vadim Kulik.

According to Vedomosti, the largest volume of investments fell on 2024 and amounted to more than 50 billion rubles. Kulik noted that the main part of the funds was directed to the purchase, development and support of domestic software.

VTB Bank invested 90 billion rubles in import substitution of software

As part of the import substitution program, VTB has already transferred 85% of the bank's internal systems to Russian software. By the end of 2024, it is planned to bring this figure to 95%. The Bank is actively working to replace foreign solutions in all key areas of information technology.

One of the largest projects was the transition to the Russian operating system Astra Linux. In addition, the bank replaced the Microsoft Office suite of office applications with a domestic analogue of MyOffice. In VTB call centers, the American telecommunications platform Avaya gave way to Russian software from Naumen.

VTB is also actively engaged in import substitution of software and hardware systems (PAC). From 2021 to July 2024, the bank commissioned 30 PACS based on Arenadata products, which include more than 1000 nodes. By the end of 2024, it is planned to replace 85% of PACS.

In the field of backup, VTB is introducing the domestic RuBackup system from the Astra group. This solution is expected to completely replace the western NetBackup system in all segments of the bank's network.

To organize remote access of employees to the digital infrastructure, VTB is switching from a Citrix solution to a desktop virtualization system from the Russian company Basis. By the end of 2024, it is planned to transfer most of the bank's employees to this platform.

VTB also almost completely abandoned the use of the solutions of the American developer SAS for big data analytics. In the system software category, the bank actively migrates to its own products, in particular, in the field of virtualization systems, where software from VMWare was previously used.

The import substitution process also affected database management systems. If earlier the share of Oracle and Microsoft SQL solutions was 80-90%, then in 2024 it decreased to less than 25%. VTB is gradually transferring the remaining parts to domestic software, mainly using solutions from T1 and Postgres Professional.

Experts note that the most capital-intensive items of import substitution costs at VTB are probably the replacement of Oracle databases and the migration of virtualization tools. According to the Director of Strategy and Technology Development Axiom JDKRoman Karpov, the next wave of significant costs will be associated with the replacement of the connecting software - application servers and the application environment.

Mikhail Nesterov, Head of Sales at DCLogic, emphasizes that significant funds are probably invested in cybersecurity, given the huge customer base and the amount of information processed at the bank.

The software import substitution program is part of VTB's broader digital transformation strategy. In the period from 2020 to 2024, the bank plans to invest 500 billion rubles in digital transformation. This program includes not only replacing the software, but also updating the hardware, introducing new identification systems and improving the reliability of the IT infrastructure as a whole.^[1]

VTB launches cluster for the development of artificial intelligence technologies

VTB launches its own cluster for the development of artificial intelligence technologies - "Digital Assistant." This was announced on July 5, 2024 by the Deputy President-Chairman of the Board of VTB Vadim Kulik.

The cluster will focus on the development of VTB digital assistants. These are services based on technologies of large language models and recommendation systems for solving personalized requests of employees and customers. The cluster will also conduct research on deep language models, with which the development of digital assistants is closely associated. With their help, these digital services not only generate the most relevant answers and solutions, but also allow you to predict the wishes of users, said a top manager at VTB.

{{quote 'The implementation of the Digital Assistant program is one of the key areas in the bank's technological strategy for the next few years. The creation of a cluster should contribute to the synergy of all technologies, competencies and teams in the field of AI technologies at the bank. We will strive to ensure that in the future of three years, each of our clients uses at least one digital assistant VTB. We also expect that the provision of banking services by our employees will be carried out with the help of AI assistants, - said Vadim Kulik. }}

Large language models can bring the provision of banking services to a qualitatively new level - to increase the speed of tasks, to achieve greater efficiency of decisions made by bank employees. And the use of recommendation systems will provide the best understanding of the client's needs. The combination of these two elements will be the key to the most efficient work, Kulik added.

According to VTB research, 73% of users are ready to transfer management of their finances to AI. These results confirm the strategic importance of developing the Digital Assistant direction.

We are convinced that one of the main trends in the development of fintech for the next few years should be the improvement of personal digital advisers, "said VTB Deputy President and Chairman of the Board.

At the same time, the development of deep language models poses serious challenges to researchers - the problems of the "toxicity" of models, as well as the so-called "hallucinations" in their answers - when AI gives the user a fictional answer: for example, the user asks a question about the amount of revenue of a certain company or the year of birth of a person, and the algorithm as an answer offers a fictional number that looks believable from his point of view. The issue of compliance with ethical standards with machine algorithms is also ambiguous.

In order to minimize such risks for itself, VTB, together with universities, conducts research in the field of digital humanities. This area studies humanitarian, ethical issues with the number of communication and can potentially help in finding technological solutions to the problems that the development of large language models poses for us. It is necessary to harmoniously develop technologies based on common ethical priorities. All these issues will be in the focus of attention of our cluster, - summed up Vadim Kulik.

VTB "completed the digital transformation." The head of the bank reported on its results to Russian President Vladimir Putin

On June 24, 2024, the chairman of the board of VTBANDRAY Kostin, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, announced the end of the bank's digital transformation.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, it seems to me, is quite effective work. We have fulfilled all the plans ahead of us. We got a record profit. We have completed the digital transformation of the bank: today it is a completely different bank in terms of modern technologies, - said the president of VTB.

At the end of June 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with VTB Bank Chairman Andrei Kostin

According to him, the supervisory board of VTB adopted a new 3-year strategy of the bank. The main directions of VTB's work remain the same, among them - lending to the real sector of the economy, primarily high-tech and import substitutes, Kostin emphasized.

As noted by the Deputy President-Chairman of the Board of VTB Vadim Kulik, VTB's digital transformation was carried out in three years, according to its results, the bank entered the import substitution of technologies at the level of 60-70%. According to Kulik, by January 1, 2025, the economic effect of VTB digitalization will reach 500 billion rubles.

According to VTB's plans, by December 31, 2024, only domestic software included in the Unified Register of Domestic Software should remain in the bank's critical IT infrastructure.^[2]

As part of the new strategy, we will strengthen these indicators and pay special attention to comprehensive services for Russian families, providing them with the necessary financial services, creating the simplest and most convenient digital environment, including interaction with government agencies to simplify access to social support programs. The bank is constantly improving the pool of products and services that meet the needs of customers at all stages of family development: from the birth of a child to the payment of a pension, "said Georgy Gorshkov, Deputy President and Chairman of the Bank's Board.

VTB has introduced a new platform for assessing the risks of brokerage products

VTB has introduced a platform for assessing the risks of brokerage products. The bank announced this on June 13, 2024.

The implementation made it possible to increase the level of automation of business processes by 1.5 times, as well as expand the possibilities of margin lending and increase the efficiency of investments of broker clients.

In recent years, there has been a steady increase in investor interest in securities and term products transactions. Customers see this as additional opportunities to save and increase savings in addition to bank deposits. An additional module allows the bank to quickly respond to changes in market conditions, and accurately assess risks for both the client and the broker, - said Maxim Kondratenko, member of the board of VTB Bank.

The Brokerage Risk Assessment platform is part of the market risk calculation system for trading operations. It allows you to calculate risk rates for different types of instruments, conduct scenario analysis of the portfolio, assess potential losses in the implementation of a stressful scenario and the need for economic capital. The module is built on the target import-independent process stack.

The transition to this system made it possible to speed up some of the design processes and choose more modern risk assessment methods. During the implementation, it was possible to increase the level of automation of business processes by 1.5 times. Due to the created architecture, a system has been developed that promptly calculates the necessary metrics from current models. An optimized methodology has also been implemented that uses current market information and modern methods for assessing risk indicators. This allowed the bank to offer customers more favorable conditions and expand the possibilities of margin lending. Now customers will be able to work with a large shoulder, that is, purchase more securities on credit.

The time for calculating risk metrics has been reduced by half, which allows you to increase the speed of business decision-making. In addition, the module made it possible to completely switch to an import-substituted product in the processes of calculating the risks of the trading book, - said Nikita Rybchenko, Head of the Department of Technological Development of General Banking Systems, Senior Vice President of VTB.

We are doing everything to invest with us was comfortable for any investor. The launch of the risk assessment platform made it possible to weaken the requirements for providing margin loans for a number of liquid assets - to increase available leverage, - said Andrey Yatskov, head of the brokerage services department, senior vice president of VTB.

FTS disconnected Sberbank and VTB from the service for registration of individual entrepreneurs and LLC due to the imposition of services

At the end of May 2024, the Federal Tax Service of Russia temporarily suspended access to the electronic registration system for individual entrepreneurs and legal entities for a number of major banks, including Sberbank and VTB. As it turned out, credit organizations violated the established rules for using this service by imposing services for opening settlement accounts on citizens who applied for business registration directly to the tax authorities. Read more here.

VTB will pay 141 million rubles to NVision Group for licenses for Microsoft software

At the end of March 2024 VTB rubles , NVision Group VAT the Supreme Court ordered to recover from the bank approximately 141 million in favor of "" in the case of payment for food licenses. Microsoft Thus, the decision of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal was upheld.

The proceedings, according to RBC, are related to a sublicense agreement under which VTB paid Envision Group (part of the Sitronics group owned by AFK Sistema) 707 million rubles for licensing rights to use Microsoft software in 2020‒2022. In the contract, it was stated that this amount is not subject to VAT. However, on January 1, 2021, amendments to the Tax Code came into force in Russia, canceling zero VAT for software not included in the register of Russian software.

The Supreme Court ordered to recover from VTB Bank approximately 141 million rubles in favor of NVision Group

As a result, NVision Group was forced to pay VAT itself from license payments received from VTB after 2021. The case file says that the company repeatedly appealed to the bank with a request to bring the contract in line with the new legislation, but was refused. After that, NVision Group appealed to the Moscow Arbitration Court with a demand to pay VAT.

During the proceedings, the representative of VTB referred to the clause of the contract with NVision Group, according to which its conditions could not change throughout the entire validity period. The Arbitration Court initially agreed with this position, taking the side of the bank. But the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal, which was appealed by NVision Group, canceled the earlier decision. The Supreme Court also agreed with the decision of the appellate instance.

Denis Polyakov, head of the digital economy practice at GMT Legal, notes that if tax legislation changes, it is also permissible to change the contract due to a significant change in circumstances (paragraph 1 of Article 451 of the Civil Code).^[3]

VTB spoke about the difficulties of switching to Russian IT products in the context of "total sanctions"

VTB has already advanced far in import substitution, but there are also difficulties. On February 1, 2024, Natalia Oleneva, Vice President, Head of the Intellectual Property Development Department of VTB Bank, spoke about them at a round table on digital transformation of public administration in the Federation Council.

One of the problems is the lack of the necessary domestic software and equipment with the required characteristics. When the state sets the indicators for import substitution, I would like the equipment and software to be available, she voiced the wish.

As an example, Natalia Oleneva cited the situation with ATMs and POS terminals, which are included in one class. According to the established indicator, it is necessary to purchase 20% of such Russian-made equipment, and 80% of imported equipment can be purchased. The situation has leveled off for ATMs: there is a Saga manufacturer present in the register, VTB Bank is purchased from it. But in 2023, the bank, in order not to violate the import substitution indicators, was forced not to buy part of the imported ATMs, despite the big requests of the business. This is due to the fact that there are only imported POS terminals, explained Natalia Oleneva. At the same time, there were not enough domestic ATMs, because Saga is operating at full capacity.

We found ourselves in a situation where we put sticks in the wheels of a business in order to fulfill the indicators for import substitution, "concluded Natalia Oleneva.

According to her, this problem was already discussed the other day with a representative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and the department agreed to help. Konstantin Dolgov, deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, noted at a round table that this is a social issue - citizens cannot be left without ATMs: "We will see with the Ministry of Industry and Trade how we can additionally help here."

However, it is important at the stage of establishing indicators for import substitution to discuss them with direct consumers of products, especially with the largest, added Natalia Oleneva. Manufacturers can say one thing, and as a result, "we cannot replace heavy equipment, because there are no Russian analogues at the moment." And, accordingly, due to the fact that equipment for high-load systems is not in the registry, there are difficulties with, for example, 100% replacing system-wide software.

Another problem is that there is equipment that, due to specifics, is needed only by a limited circle of customers. Due to the fact that there is no demand, manufacturers are in no hurry to include it in the register. This point is especially acute when it comes to solutions that relate to a critical information infrastructure. For example, this was the case with the Hardware Security Module (HSM). VTB Bank also recently dealt with this situation with representatives of the Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

"By hand," of course, we are breaking it down. But we would like to see more work with manufacturers on the side of the Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, - said Natalia Oleneva.

VTB Bank is largely harder than the rest, because it is under "total sanctions," and not even always Chinese manufacturers are ready to provide it with something, says Natalia Oleneva. Therefore, the bank is very interested in import substitution. In this regard, VTB Bank is grateful to the Ministry of Industry and Trade for the subsidies that the department is ready to provide to manufacturers.

2023

VTB increased the number of pilot projects with startups by 20%

At the end of 2023, the VTB Accelerator team reviewed and evaluated more than 300 technological startups from the Russian market. 29 pilot projects were implemented in different areas, which is 20% more than in 2022. The bank announced this on January 29, 2024.

Among them are the creation of an inclusive environment, optimization of the document flow process, digitalization of analytics in marketing, assessment of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and a number of others. Most solutions are aimed at improving the level of client service.

The conversion rate of pilot projects to industrial implementations in the bank for January is more than 30%, which exceeds the market average. The launch takes place in fast track mode, and the average project duration is three months.

The criterion for success in our work is the growth of the number of innovation customers who want and are ready to experiment using not only internal developments, but also technologies from the market to solve their business problems. In 2023, this figure increased significantly, and the number of bank divisions actively working with us reached almost 90, "said Natalia Degtyareva, head of the VTB Accelerator, an important part of the VTB Accelerator's mission - contributing to the development of the domestic innovation market through the support of Russian technological startups, as well as popularizing work with them in large corporations.

The focus of the VTB Accelerator for 2024 is projects that will increase and maintain the client base, personalize interaction with users to increase sales of banking products and services, improve the quality and security of service, and expand the portfolio of non-bank services.

Such areas of development of artificial intelligence as generative AI and large language models, as well as low-code/no code-platforms, neurocognitive technologies become relevant. An important aspect of the work will remain assistance in finding and testing solutions in the context of import substitution.

Technology companies can offer cases, business hypotheses or apply for testing developments at the bank on the VTB Accelerator website.

VTB records a decrease in fraudulent attacks for the first time in four years

VTB records a decrease in fraudulent attacks for the first time in four years. The bank announced this on January 29, 2024.

2023 was a watershed year in the fight against fraudsters - for the first time in four years, their activity on retail customers decreased. The number of such cases per year amounted to 6.5 million, which is 16% less than 2022. VTB managed to save 10.5 billion rubles in the accounts of more than 100 thousand customers.

According to VTB, in 2023, fraudsters tried to steal funds from bank customers 6.5 million times. The most active for fraudulent calls, which accounted for 90% of all attackers' actions, were February, March and April 2023. The calmest are the last 4 months of the year. VTB's IT solution helped to reduce fraudulent traffic, which made it possible to fully automate the collection and transmission of data on attempts to fraudulent calls to the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation and telecom operators.

The main method of combating fraudulent calls is to track the numbers and traffic of intruders and block telephone numbers from telecom operators. Before the implemented VTB IT solution, the process from fixing a call to blocking it by a telecom operator took up to 7 days. This time was required to collect information about calls, manually process and transfer data to the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Digital Development.

The automated system allows you to transfer this process online and significantly speed up number blocking, the number of new calls from attackers using an already compromised phone number is reduced.

We see an obvious decrease in the traffic of fraudsters by the end of the year, the number of recorded attacks in December compared to January fell by more than 3 times. Including thanks to the automation of recording and tracking fraudulent calls, subsequent blocking and identification of attackers. We received impressive results - for the first time in 4 years, the trend towards the growth of fraudulent attacks is broken, we see a consistent decrease in their activity, - said Nikita Chugunov, Senior Vice President, Head of VTB's Digital Business Department.

In 2023, the volume of information received by the Ministry of Digital Development about fraudulent calls generally decreased. In comparison, month to month with 2022, a decrease in the number of calls was not observed only in March. For example, in December, a decrease of 16.89% was recorded. This was achieved thanks to the effective interaction of IT organizations, telecom operators and banks, as well as the prompt adoption of measures by control, supervisory and law enforcement agencies, - said Yevgeny Khasin, Acting Director of the Cybersecurity Department of the Russian Ministry of Digital Security.

Over the past year, fraudsters have increasingly begun to use the investment scheme: when people are involved in dubious business schemes related to the purchase of cryptocurrency, and promise greater profitability after investing money. For persuasiveness, attackers create special fake sites or applications supposedly to control investment growth, create fake graphs showing profits. To demonstrate to a potential investor victim the "security" of the investment, she may be allowed to withdraw some funds from the account. Attackers can spin the victim according to this scheme for several months. The bank reminds, before starting investments, first of all, it is important to check that the company has the necessary documents and licenses.

VTB launched an innovative technology for monitoring real estate objects

VTB Bank has launched a pilot project for monitoring pledges based on Earth remote sensing (remote sensing) data. The bank announced this on December 20, 2023. Collateral is an integral part of the lending process, ensuring the repayment of the loan, so the bank uses modern approaches to the valuation and monitoring of collateral to simplify the client's path.

As part of the project, VTB in a short time received aerospace images of inspected real estate objects. Their accuracy and quality made it possible to form objective conclusions and a report on the current physical condition of collateral items, as well as determine the degree of economic activity at the facilities. The development of algorithms for processing and analyzing satellite images to identify changes in the state of collateral objects is carried out using artificial intelligence technologies. This will make it possible to radically change the approaches to monitoring collateral in the bank, automating them as much as possible.

The bank sees great potential for the development of the service, including considering the possibility of its use in the framework of financed construction projects and in the interests of agricultural clients. Customers of the bank will be able to assess the convenience and seamless process, since control algorithms based on data from the DZZ do not require personal participation of the pledger.

Customers will not have to be distracted by communication with representatives of VTB's collateral division, supervisory and surveying companies, and most importantly, there is no need to interrupt the usual rhythm of the organization's functioning. It is worth noting that usually the analysis of the pace of project implementation is carried out on average in 5-10 working days, taking into account the visit to the facility and the formation of conclusions. The use of remote services will help reduce these times by 2 times. At the same time, the bank receives an objective picture of what is happening on the financed project and the subject of collateral, thereby managing the risks, said the head of the collateral department, senior vice president of VTB Anton Vovk.

Senior Vice President of VTB Sergey Bezbogov - on the technological challenges of 2023 and the prospects of 2024 at TAdviser SummIT

Speaking at the TAdviser SummIT conference on November 29, Senior Vice President of VTBSergey Bezbogov spoke about the technological challenges of 2023, as well as the trends and prospects of 2024, which affect the technological development of the bank.

VTB this year and last year solved various problems, but in 2023 it entered a linear trajectory, because in 2022 it was already possible to decide on many, and it became clear what to do next. A bank of such a scale as VTB, especially due to the continuing expansion of its business, has many tasks related to the internal economy, and the bank has tried to solve them over the past three years: they have combined ABS assembled from different systems, increased the reliability of their systems.

On average, now the bank is making 1.5 thousand changes a week. Business benefits from this: the credit process has accelerated almost one and a half times, and almost all credit card applications are automatic, without human intervention. The client is asked for nothing but his ID in one form or another.

But in addition to the routine, there are several interesting points that happened in 2023, said Sergey Bezbogov. One of them is digital rubles. This topic is still not fully understood and developing. On the one hand, there is a pilot: the banking sector, under the auspices of the Central Bank, is carefully piloting this system according to plan. But VTB began to look away, and recently at one of the industry events they showed how you can turn digital rubles into ordinary, cash, and get them into your hands from a simple ATM.

Thus, the transformation of digital rubles into banknotes is no longer the future, it already exists, said Sergei Bezbogov. On the other hand, back in 2022, VTB learned to transfer digital rubles to each other between individuals, and this year - between legal entities, and tried with their subsidiary bank to transfer money to another country. And the practice with digital rubles is gaining momentum.

The events of 2022 led to the fact that VTB cannot use ordinary international money, so the bank returned to direct relations with counterparties. Today VTB is able to transfer money to 39 banks in 17 countries almost online. Therefore, ordinary cashless transfers, to which everyone is accustomed in the past, are returned again. They are more difficult to arrange from the inside, but for the client this is the same familiar simple story.

New stories are also emerging - now the topic of voice assistants is becoming more and more developed, and behind them is AI, which helps to do something or advises something, offers. Many are already accustomed to the fact that you can ask for something by voice, for example, "Alice" or "Leo" (VTB voice assistant). The audience of VTB's voice assistant for 2023 increased almost 3.5 times, and VTB expects that in 2025 about 10 million of its clients will use this technology on a daily basis.

Another task that VTB will continue to solve is technological sovereignty. From the point of view of applications at VTB, since 2019, client applications have been transferred to another stack, often open source, some of which are based on their own code. Also, the integration layer has already been replaced almost completely, the DBMS - by 80%. The task is to bring everything that is still far from replacement to 100% by the end of 2024, at least by critical information infrastructure (CII).

At the same time, the bank considers it correct to transfer what does not belong to the CII to the Russian stack. Because it is important for both the bank and customers that where their money lies is reliable. And what is not supported cannot be reliable. For a year or two it will still work, and then various kinds of nuances arise.

Another point that relates to import substitution is mobile devices. There are already Russian OS and phones, "in principle, they look good and work." And now a banking mobile application has already appeared on such a mobile device: the bank recently presented its mobile application on the Aurora OS and the device from Aquarius.

One of the trends is development in the field of data. We need technologies that would ensure the unification of data so that large models can be built on them, and at the same time act within the framework of legislation that protects data. Such technologies already exist. According to Sergei Bezbogov, VTB, together with Fiztech, built a crypto enclave - PAC, which even allows the owner of this crypto enclave not to have access to the data inside it, and allows using only those models that are built on this data.

Another topic that is not so new, but received a new life in 2023, is biometrics. The unified biometric system, in particular, has received a new life and is developing in every possible way, Sergei Bezbogov believes. VTB is actively involved in this story. People's faces are already in different databases, and we are not surprised when we are filmed at the entrance to some offices, or when we are under video surveillance on the streets. At the same time, it is considered normal to use this to search for criminals, and some are afraid to receive services, says a top manager at VTB.

It seems to me that we need to stop being afraid of this. Our photos are on the Internet and we ourselves post them there. So in the end, let's benefit from it. Biometric services today are definitely ready for many financial organizations, including us. We are now testing all this at the exhibition "Russia is calling!" legally through a commercial biometric system accredited to the Ministry of Digital Development, - said Sergey Bezbogov.

О TAdviser SummIT

The TAdviser SummIT conference, held on November 29, became one of the largest in the history of its holding: in total, more than 1.4 thousand delegates attended the event, more than 40 stands were deployed in the exhibition area, and more than 150 speakers made presentations in the plenary part and eight thematic sessions. The conference was attended by the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev, who in the format of an interview on stage answered sharp questions from participants in the IT industry.

VTB and T1 are trying to remove ABS from the "needle" of Oracle DBMS by writing a new system from scratch

As TAdviser found out on November 9, 2023, T1 and VTB are developing an automated banking system (ABS) as part of an import substitution project at the bank. Information on the development of ABS for VTB was made during a presentation during the visit of the first deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia Olga Skorobogatova to the T1 stand at the FINOPOLIS forum, and it was also confirmed by TAdviser sources close to the holding.

Import substitution in the field of ABS is one of the strongest headaches of banks, especially large ones. There are domestic ABSs for them on the market, but already existing products are mainly sharpened for imported DBMS, most often for Oracle, and other imported system software. And financial institutions, as critical infrastructure facilities (CII), need to switch to domestic solutions by January 1, 2025. Industry representatives have repeatedly noted earlier, and this time at FINOPOLIS, that in the case of ABS and processing, it is hardly possible to fulfill the import substitution requirements by the deadline.

For more information on how VTB approached this issue, see here.

VTB requires thousands of IT shniki to develop towards technological sovereignty

Technological sovereignty is one of the challenges facing VTB Bank, and for development in this vein, the bank needs thousands more people. This was announced on November 1, 2023 at a conference dedicated to the development of talents in the context of digital business transformation, said Sergey Bezbogov, deputy head of the technological block, senior vice president of VTB.

My head now hurts around the clock about what is called "technological sovereignty," - said the top manager of VTB.

VTB began introducing its own developments and using relevant Russian solutions in the technological market a few years ago. Import substitution has already affected all IT solutions and IT tools with which any bank employee interacts.

Among other challenges facing VTB are new technological solutions and platforms, joining new assets, cross-border transfers, and continuity of services. And for those tasks that VTB now has to solve, highly professional and unique engineers are required who can find non-trivial solutions, said Sergey Bezbogov. Previously, these problems were solved with the help of "advanced Western companies," but now the bank solves them itself, and in many times shorter terms with other tools.

According to VTB Senior Vice President, the bank has more than 1,000 technological vacancies per year. The bank has the greatest need for analysts, back-end/front-end/full stack developers, application administrators, testers, specialized infrastructure administrators.

Sergei Bezbogov noted that now the administrators have come to the fore, because there are many systems and they need to be supported, monitoring systems should be built, and this is a large layer of work.

How many IT specialists now work for the VTB technology block, the senior vice president of the bank did not specify. Earlier, VTB said that at the stage of digital transformation 2020-2022. mixed teams were created from specialists from business and IT divisions, the total number of which at its peak exceeded 20 thousand people^[1].

The bank is looking for the necessary "thousands of specialists" everywhere. Much attention is paid to working with young IT professionals. VTB cooperates with universities, as well as organizes training and paid internships in IT programs for university graduates. The bank also annually holds a large-scale hackathon MORE.Tech for developers, analysts and designers and a Data Fusion Contest machine learning competition.

The search for IT personnel has to be against the background of an increased shortage of highly qualified personnel. Director of the Edtech Hub of the Skolkovo Foundation Natalya Tsarevskaya-Dyakina noted at the conference that universities will not be able to fill this deficit, since formal education does not keep pace with the development of the industry. In addition, there are still fewer places in IT specialties in universities than the indicators of demand for IT technology voiced by the market. Against this background, non-university training and retraining programs for personnel are becoming increasingly important.

In terms of training and development of specialists, VTB, in particular, has high hopes for the T1 Digital Academy. Already, 10 new training programs have been jointly made, which VTB Group is fully using, said Sergey Bezbogov.

T1 Digital Academy has grown as an internal training department in the T1 holding, and was officially launched on the foreign market recently, in July 2023. More than 90% of teachers are employees of the holding, practicing experts, IT specialists, while external experts are also involved in individual projects, the director of the academy Dmitry Krasovsky told TAdviser.

He added that the banking sector, fintech are now the main clients of their organization. But the T1 Digital Academy is actively going into other areas, such as, for example, industry, retail - those industries where digital transformation is now actively promoting and there is a great need for relevant specialists.

TAdviser interview with Senior Vice President Sergei Bezbogov

Sergey Bezbogov, Senior Vice President of VTB, Deputy Head of the Technological Block, told TAdviser in July 2023 about how the interests of the state and big business unite in the field of AI. Read more here.

Tadviser IT Prize 2023 in the nomination "Digitalization in banks: project of the year"

Financial Transaction Processing Platform (POFT) of the bank VTB for the development of interbank settlements payment services and won the nomination "Digitalization in: banks project of the year" of the TADVISER IT PRIZE 2023. The platform was developed and implemented by VTB together with the company on the Cinimex basis of the technology stack at. POFT open code maintains international standards for the transmission financial of information, while not using foreign solutions in this area. Read more here. [1]

Sergey Bezbogov, VTB at TAdviser SummIT - about the leading import substitution

In his speech at TAdviser SummIT 2023, Sergey Bezbogov, Senior Vice President, Deputy Head of the Technological Block, VTB, stated that digital transformation and technological sovereignty are in the focus of the bank's development. The corresponding Digital Transformation Strategy has been adopted. He summed up the results of the work carried out, starting in 2019, when the digital transformation in the bank was accelerated.

In 2019, due to a number of associations that took place in VTB Group, a heterogeneous IT landscape was formed in the bank. At that time, four types of ABS worked, in product areas the bank lagged behind the market leaders, the availability of key systems was low (96.74%), there was virtually no production process (T2M 240 days).

It was necessary, firstly, to make the IT landscape more homogeneous, and secondly, to raise the bank's client services in market ratings, and both tasks were successfully solved, Sergey Bezbogov emphasized. The architecture of the IT platform was radically revised, the selected technological stack made it possible to enter new solutions into the Unified Register of Russian Software. This is the only possibility of fulfilling a number of key indicators for import substitution, which are required by the main shareholder of the bank - the state, Sergey Bezbogov explained.

Today, the bank has launched conveyor lending in both segments, retail and corporate, since the number of clients - legal entities last year exceeded a million. And this is done on the same technologies on which the platform runs, in the same architecture.

Over the past three years, the bank has transferred most of the systems, the total number of which exceeds a thousand, to the target architecture - already 65% of the IT landscape solutions are independent. In order to implement import substitution, a special program has been launched in the bank, which provides for work on four main clusters: system software, virtualization, databases, office software. At the end of 2022, more than 20 thousand implementations related to import substitution took place at the bank, more than 70 projects have been launched at the same time, 23,500 virtual machines have been deployed in the OpenStack cluster, 70% of the bank's employees have stopped using Microsoft Office. Many approved import substitution indicators are performed ahead of schedule:

• server OS 16.5% achieved (15% approved in the Strategy);

• server and binding software: 70% (50%);
• content management tools, sites and portal solutions: 100% (50%);
• business analytics: 100% (90%).

Sergey Bezbogov especially noted that there are simply no ready-made solutions to many problems, and all banks and companies are actually going through the research stage. In these conditions, it is extremely necessary to exchange experience, share your work. The time has come to unite to solve common problems, to work together on a number of layers of digitalization of the information landscape in order to save both time and money, he concluded.

As one of the most serious challenges, Sergey Bezbogov outlined the need to replace Oracle, today objectively the most high-performance database. The bank is looking for other DBMSs, and PostgreSQL is one of the possible options. This work is being carried out in conjunction with the Fintech Association.

We managed to build an IT platform architecture that is truly omnichannel, said Sergey Bezbogov. - And we immediately began to make new systems on the new technological stack. This made it possible to solve many issues related to import substitution, to become largely technologically sovereign.

TAdviser SummIT took place on May 30, 2023 in Moscow and gathered more than 1000 participants. Reports were made by Deputy General Director of Russian Railways Yevgeny Charkin, Deputy Head of the Federal Treasury Alexander Albychev, Vice President for IT EvrazHolding Artem Natrusov and many others. In a panel interview, Deputy Minister of Digital Development of the Russian Federation Maxim Parshin answered questions from the organizers and guests of the summit.

VTB sued 68 million rubles from Microsoft due to "unjust enrichment"

On September 6, 2023, the Moscow Arbitration Court fully satisfied VTB's claim against Microsoft's Russian subsidiary about the "unjust enrichment" of the IT company. As a result, the latter will have to pay 68.6 million rubles. Read more here.

Gentle collector robots and artificial intelligence. How VTB uses digital tools to work with debtors

Since 2018, VTB Bank has been using robotic collectors to work with overdue debts of individuals, gradually expanding this practice. In 2021, this decision accounted for 40% of all voice communications with the client in arrears [5]. At the same time, VTB has no judicial problems in connection with the use of collector robots yet, Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Board, said at a press briefing on June 6, 2023. Read more here.

Rostelecom, VTB and Positive Technologies invest 3.5 billion rubles in the creation of new generation firewalls

Rostelecom, VTB and Positive Technologies are investing 3.5 billion rubles in the creation of new generation firewalls (NGFW). This became known in mid-April 2023. Read more here.

Creation of a joint venture together with Rostelecom for the development of digital infrastructure in the regions

Rostelecom and VTB Infrastructure Holding have created a joint venture (JV) Infra-Telecom, which will specialize in organizing projects for the development of digital infrastructure in the regions. This was announced on January 30, 2023 to TAdviser by representatives of Rostelecom. According to them, we are talking about the creation of video surveillance and photo and video recording complexes, intelligent transport systems, improving energy efficiency, automating processes in housing and communal services, implementing Safe City projects and other areas. Read more here.

2022

The economic effect of VTB's digital transformation amounted to 305 billion rubles

VTB on April 13, 2023 announced that, following the first stage of the bank's digital transformation, it provided an economic effect of 305 billion rubles.

In 2022, VTB completed a strategic cycle of digital transformation. According to its results, a technologically different bank was created that meets the best industry standards in terms of reliability, fault tolerance, import independence and is able to adapt to the requirements of the external environment. The bank has 19 technological transformation programs and more than 300 projects.

Unification of information systems was carried out, the product backlog was eliminated, the level of reliability was increased, a new production process was created. The greatest economic effect within the framework of digital transformation was given by the Omnikanality program and everything related to client services, analytics and compliance with regulatory requirements, as well as the Reliability, Import Substitution and Technological Sovereignty programs. The introduction of the Predective Analytics Laboratory program in the bank for three years of digital transformation has yielded tens of billions of rubles of net economic effect. Within the framework of the program, the share of models developed using machine learning and AI methods increased by 67%, - said Vadim Kulik.

VTB has already moved to the stage of replication in the technology market of its own IT solutions. It is expected that the bank's developments will be able to replace many foreign analogues. At the end of 2022, VTB brought the share of expenses for domestic software to 75% in the total amount of expenses for software. As of April 2023, more than 60% of VTB's critical information systems are covered by independent vendor solutions.

The Bank develops and develops innovative products and technologies both together with major universities, such as MIPT and Skoltech, and together with technological partners.

Among the solutions that are already used in the bank and are available to other market participants through VTB's technological partners are, for example, the Mirion graph analytics platform. It can be used to counter fraud, verify counterparties, automate the process of identifying conflicts of interest and manage critical infrastructure. The solution helps to significantly reduce the time to analyze such information both by man and by external information systems.

Together with MIPT, VTB has developed an Industrial Optimizer, the purpose of which is to help Russian companies optimize their processes. The service can be useful to a variety of industries, from the financial market to the aircraft industry. Also, together with MIPT, another promising technology in the field of data management is being developed - a crypto enclave. At the moment, there is a stage of testing an experimental sample inside the bank, which is planned to be completed in April and enter the phase of industrial tests.

VTB's further technology strategy is aimed at outperforming market trends. By December 31, 2024, only domestic software included in the Unified Register of Russian Programs should remain in the bank's critical IT infrastructure. To come to such a result, several parallel processes were launched in the bank - obsolete systems from the point of view of architecture are being decommissioned, new ones are being introduced, already implemented in the logic of import independence, some of the previous systems are being transferred to new components.^[1]

About 300 IT startups passed through the VTB Accelerator

Since the beginning of 2022, the VTB Accelerator team has reviewed and evaluated almost 300 technological startups from the Russian market, operating in various directions - from VR technologies to artificial intelligence. In 2022, 24 pilot projects with technology companies were implemented. Launches are carried out in fast track mode, the average piloting duration is three months. VTB announced this on December 26, 2022.

The number of customer divisions of the bank over the past year has grown to 60, many of which regularly use Accelerator services. As of December 2022, the conversion rate of pilot projects to industrial implementations is more than 30%, which exceeds the market average.

There are already 2.5 thousand startups in the VTB Accelerator database. Over the three years of operation, more than 80 of them have launched pilot projects with the bank. VTB Accelerator services and expertise turned out to be more in demand than ever in 2022. The bank's focus on the formation of technological sovereignty has become an incentive for divisions to turn to Accelerator services more often.

Among the solutions of Russian startups that VTB Accelerator tested in 2022 are a photo and video recording system for objects with protection against fraud View App, a solution for gamification of user scenarios RevGames, voice simulators for developing communication skills of "live" communication for new employees of contact centers "Dialog Simulator," customizable VR simulators Varwin, a solution for generating personal video offers for clients "Personal video" and a number of others.

More than one hundred technology startups pass through the VTB Accelerator every year, which allows us to see well the market trends in working with them. In 2022, many promising startups leave the Russian market, experiencing a lack of investment and sanctions restrictions. The bank has a high demand for Russian technologies, and our resources are aimed not only at internal development, but also at quickly piloting ready-made solutions from the open market in cooperation with startup teams. This win-win partnership allows us to find and quickly integrate promising developments into the bank's infrastructure, and startups - to receive expert support in the development and use of their products on the Russian market and a large strategic partner in the person of VTB, - said Natalia Degtyareva, Director of VTB Accelerator.

Following the trend towards strengthening technological sovereignty, as of December 2022, VTB is investigating wfm-solutions (work flow management - workflow management system), solutions for contact centers, managing a fleet of "service" mobile devices of bank employees, smart tagging tools for sites and mobile applications. The bank is going on pilot projects exploring the possibilities of solutions from the open market in the field of speech analytics, document designers, audit systems and monitoring IT resources.

The Accelerator has its own technological sandbox that meets all VTB information security requirements. Thus, the time for subsequent integration of the solution with the processes and systems of the bank is significantly reduced.

VTB is experiencing the largest DDoS attack in its history

On December 6, 2022, VTB representatives informed TAdviser that the bank's technological infrastructure was under "an unprecedented cyber attack from abroad." According to them, it became the largest not only in 2022, but also for the entire time of the bank.

At the time of publication of the material, the bank's systems are operating normally. As specified in VTB, customer data is protected from external interference - they are located in the internal perimeter of the technological infrastructure.

In the course of confronting the actions of hackers attacking the external circuit of the bank's systems, experts do everything necessary and possible so that customers do not feel discomfort in using services. However, when using antimers, temporary difficulties in the operability of banking applications and the online version of VTB Online are periodically possible. We apologize for this situation and look forward to understanding, the bank said in a statement.

According to the conclusions of VTB experts, the analysis of the DDoS attack indicates that it is planned and large-scale. The purpose of the attack is to inconvenience the bank's customers by making banking services difficult.

Most of the requests to the bank's services during the attack were generated from foreign segments, Internet but the fact of harmful traffic from the Russian IP addresses is of particular concern, VTB noted.

The bank does not exclude that some of these Russian addresses could be among the participants in the attack as a result of cyber fraud. All established Russian IP addresses will be transferred by the bank to law enforcement agencies for verification, since actions to organize and participate in a DDoS attack are a criminal offense.

IT import substitution in retail business reaches 95%

IT import substitution in VTB's retail business reached 95%, and the share of all application systems using only Russian technologies reached 57%. The bank itself announced this on November 10, 2022.

{{quote 'We began to introduce our own bank developments, as well as acquire interesting Russian solutions in the technological market several years ago. Import substitution has already affected absolutely all programs and IT tools with which any employee of our bank interacts. Today, the technological sovereignty of our systems is already about 60%, - said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank. }}

According to Anatoly Pechatnikov, Deputy President and Chairman of the Board of VTB, in the spring of 2022, the bank was able to carry out a comprehensive transformation of the Internet bank in a short time and maintain a high level of information security of its digital solutions.

VTB stressed that, creating a domestic one, the ON bank focuses mainly on open source development and registration of its products in the Unified Register. By the Russian software end of 2024, all critical information infrastructure bank facilities will be completely transferred to domestic equipment and, ON as well as recommendations for. Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation to import substitution

{{quote 'We strive to ensure that: 90% of our IT systems are free from sanctions risks, the share of investments in domestic solutions in the field of information technology by the end of 2023 reached 82%, and 100% of the key components of critical infrastructure were based on domestic solutions. We welcome the opportunities created by the Government of the Russian Federation for the development of import-independent solutions in the field of technology, - said Vadim Kulik^[2] }}

VTB expects savings of 30 billion rubles over 3 years from the transition to domestic IT solutions

VTB expects savings of 30 billion rubles from the transition to domestic IT solutions. This was announced by the chairman of the board of the bank Andrei Kostin on November 10, 2022.

But, by the way, this gives us not only political protection and today business protection, but also cost savings. We calculated that on the horizon of three years this saves us about 30 billion rubles, because we will make these products ourselves. And we do not pay the huge money that was constantly withdrawn from us by foreign companies, - added the head of VTB.

According to him, over the past two years, the bank's dependence on foreign IT solutions has almost halved. Thus, in 2019, foreign technologies accounted for 90% of banking IT systems, and by November 2022 this share had decreased to less than 50%. Kostin added that by the end of 2024, the bank plans to independently develop solutions related to critical infrastructure.

To ensure the technological sovereignty of the bank and independence from foreign vendors, the bank created and develops its own internal competence centers. By November 2022, according to VTB's own data, the bank had opened more than 30 projects in the most critical areas of import substitution, including projects for migration from RISC-servers to x86-processor architecture, virtualization, office and system replacement, software corporate portal, application software, solutions for storage systems and so on.

By November 2022, VTB uses 752 systems built on a technological stack of 180 technologies, 77 of which are independent of import, for 82 domestic analogues were found, the remaining 21 are being searched. In addition, 63% of the technologies of industry banking software are already import-substituted, 33% of domestic analogues have been identified and migration projects have been launched, and a search for a replacement continues for 5% of technologies.^[3]

VTB introduces a new system for protecting customers from credit fraudsters

VTB on September 7, 2022 announced that it is developing a system to protect customers from issuing loans under the influence of fraudsters, which will track the possible participation of cybercriminals at all stages of the credit process: from the client's application to the receipt of funds. If a threat to the client is identified, then the technology will stop the issuance of the loan, preventing the withdrawal of money to the accounts of fraudsters.

The system will be based on a scoring model, which will allow the bank to evaluate loan applications in terms of the potential influence of fraudsters on the actions of the client. Using a "knowledge base" that includes information from several sources, artificial intelligence will identify deviations from the borrower's standard behavior. They can signal that cybercriminals have gained access to the client's Internet bank or mobile application, or the borrower has already been influenced by another "credit legend" of fraudsters and does not assess his actions at the proper level. If the number of such signals is critical, the scoring model will issue a negative decision on the loan application, stopping the criminal scheme.

This technology will be used not only in remote channels, but also in bank offices. Often, "fraudulent" loans are issued in the department under the influence of social engineering techniques. To systematically combat this, VTB intends to expand the powers of employees who can refuse to issue a loan if there is convincing evidence about the influence of fraudsters on customer actions.

{{quote 'A scheme with "fraudulent" loans is the main threat to customers. Falling under the "hypnosis" of intruders, they not only lose their funds, but also remain with millions of debts to banks. Unfortunately, the problem cannot be solved by writing off such debts: a significant part of the funds lost by customers remains on the conscience of "credit fraudsters." As always, we urge you to fight not with the consequences, but with the cause of this "shameful" phenomenon, so that when issuing a loan, be sure that the borrower acts of his own free will. The presented functionality will allow us to additionally protect at least 2 billion rubles of client funds annually, significantly reducing the damage from the actions of attackers, - said Anatoly Pechatnikov. }}

VTB also plans to provide customers with the opportunity to independently establish self-restrictions on remote lending. If the client already has a loan or does not need to issue it in the future, he will be able to mark the digital channel on the restriction on receiving credit funds online. When the client needs credit funds, he will need to further confirm this fact. According to the bank, several hundred thousand VTB Online users will want to use this option.

Record number of fraudulent attacks on bank customers

In June 2022, VTB Bank received a record number of complaints about fraudsters since the beginning of the year. Customers left 850 thousand requests. This is 30% more than in May. Anatoly Pechatnikov, deputy chairman of the organization's board, announced an explosive increase in the activity of attackers in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel.

In June, VTB specialists identified about 7,000 fraudulent pages imitating banking sites. This is almost 10 times higher than in May and 2.5 times higher than in all previous months of this year.

VTB has replaced more than 60% of the bank critical InformSystems

VTB on July 7, 2022 announced that it would ensure the complete impermanence of its critical information systems over the next two years. As of July 2022, more than 60% of such banking systems are already covered by vendor-independent solutions.

Critical information systems are a class of information systems that actually ensure the operation of key services for VTB customers. They cover a wide range of key functions of the bank - from ensuring customers' financial transactions are carried out and the possibility of cashless payment of wages to the bank's card to preventing fraud. In particular, such systems include a system of salary projects, a system for analyzing and identifying operations without the consent of customers, and many others.

Ensuring the import independence of such systems will allow VTB not only to further improve their security, but also to reduce the bank's expenses, which were previously mandatory due to dependence on foreign vendors.

The import substitution program is an important component of VTB's digital development strategy and will ensure the stability and smooth operation of the bank's IT infrastructure and services. We focused on what the largest suppliers are doing, identified the zones where our dependence is maximum, in order, first of all, to get rid of dependence in the field of mission-critical systems, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President-Chairman of the VTB Board.

As of July 2022, the bank is actively introducing its own developments, as well as acquiring interesting Russian solutions in the technological market. VTB not only uses, but also creates domestic software, focusing mainly on open source development and their registration in the Unified Register of Russian Software. Among the most promising products that VTB can offer to the market are the digital banking platform, the cloud platform VTB.Cloud, a product for holding meetings of collegial bodies, solutions for monitoring user experience, automating CRM processes, as well as the production and operation of complex software products.

To ensure independence from imports and foreign vendors, the bank created its own internal competence centers. In July 2022, VTB opened more than 20 projects in the most critical areas of import substitution, including projects for migration from RISK to servers architecture, office and x86processor virtualization system replacement, ON corporate portal, application software, solutions for storage systems , etc.

As VTB previously reported, the transition to independent import solutions will allow the bank to save about 30 billion rubles, remaining within the framework of the goals that were originally established at the start of technological transformation in 2019 - first of all, it is to provide the bank's customers with convenient and stable services.

VTB will increase investment in Russian software to 85%

By 2024, 85% bank VTB of the costs ON will come the Russian from development. The bank announced this on July 4, 2022. Large-scale work on the transition to import-independent software started at VTB in 2019, by 2021 the set of specialized projects was combined into a target program, which should be completed in 2024.

The import substitution program has been going on in our bank for several years. We not only use, but also create domestic software, focusing mainly on open source development and their registration in the Unified Register of Russian Software. As of July 2022, the bank has opened more than 20 projects in the most critical areas of import substitution. We believe that domestic developments can successfully replace Western counterparts, - said Sergey Bezbogov, deputy head of the VTB technological block.

In total, according to experts, the transition to import-independent solutions will save us about 30 billion rubles. At the same time, we work within the framework of the goals that were originally established at the start of technological transformation in 2019 - first of all, this is providing our customers with convenient and stable services, "added VTB Senior Vice President.

During his speech, Sergey Bezbogov also identified a number of areas and startups that are the most promising for the Russian IT market. According to the top manager, these are solutions for managing disk space and backup, solutions for data management (data governance) and other developments. Such startups, in particular, are interested in the VTB accelerator - since the beginning of 2022, his team has analyzed and evaluated 171 solutions from the open market.

VTB Senior Vice President also noted the importance of large companies working with young specialists. The bank has joint educational programs and laboratories with universities (for example, with MIPT and Moscow State University), grant programs (its own program "One Step Ahead" and joint with MIPT), internships (Junior and ROST), annual hackathons (More tech and Data Fusion). Such programs are an effective tool for finding new employees, primarily in the IT sector.

VTB announced plans to completely abandon imported commercial DBMS and switch to PostgreSQL

As part of the bank-wide task of transferring key information systems to import-independent technologies, VTB is working to replace database management systems (DMS) of foreign vendors with freely distributed PostgreSQL. The final transfer of existing systems to PostgreSQL is scheduled for the end of 2024, and all new implementations already use this DBMS. The goal of the transition is to eliminate the bank's dependence on foreign software suppliers, maintain the necessary level of information security and resiliency, reducing IT infrastructure costs. Read more here.

VTB explained how to do without foreign IT products

VTB is focused on Russian technologies and solutions as part of its activities, the bank told TAdviser on February 25. On the eve of the United States announced new sanctions against Russia related to military actions in Ukraine. The list includes, among other things, restrictions on the supply of high-tech products to Russia.

Most of the ready-made solutions that are used to create banking products, as well as in the field of information security and document management, are Russian developments, explained TAdviser at VTB. This is mainly a proprietary or custom development, where the bank is the copyright holder, as well as solutions developed by leading Russian IT companies.

Measures to switch to the predominant use of domestic software are carried out in the bank as part of the implementation of government directives. All this will minimize the negative consequences of sanctions for our clients, - noted in VTB.

In T1, which is a key technology partner of VTB and in which the bank owns a stake, they have not yet been able to comment on how US technological restrictions may affect their companies.

Sergey Lobov, commercial director of the T1 group, in an interview with TAdviser at the end of 2021 said that the group's staff reached 7.5 thousand people. Its main assets are T1 Integration, T1 Consulting, T1 Cloud, MultiCard, Innotech Group, Reksoft. Lobov also called import substitution - both hardware and software one of the key areas of work of the T1: "we have seriously immersed ourselves in the development of domestic hardware solutions, servers, computers, and so on."

VTB also has another technology company with which the bank is associated - the Supercode company. In addition to VTB, its founders were Rostelecom and Protei Soft LLC, which is 80% owned by GS INVEST JSC (a joint venture between Gazprombank and Sergei Matsotsky, to which he contributed assets received after the division of the IBS business).

Recall that on February 24, VTB turned out to be one of the largest Russian banks included in the sanctions list of the United States and its allies. Against VTB introduced "blocking" sanctions in the United States and Great Britain. The restrictions imply the blocking of all its assets in these countries, prohibitions on any transaction transactions involving the bank in their currencies, as well as with any counterparties from these countries.

VTB cards and a number of other sanctioned banks will be disconnected from Apple Pay and Google Pay services, the Central Bank said. Contact and contactless payment with their cards in Russia remains available. Customers of these banks will not be able to pay with their cards abroad and use them to pay for services in online stores and aggregators of services registered in countries supporting sanctions.

Turning off Apple Pay and Google Pay

At the end of February 2022, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation announced that Apple Pay and Google Pay were being disabled from users of VTB, Sovcombank, Promsvyazbank and Otkritie due to US sanctions. The latter were introduced due to the start of the military operation of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine. Read more here.

VTB chose contractors to test its IT systems for 1.78 billion rubles

In January 2022, VTB Bank signed contracts for two years for integration, functional, acceptance and component testing of information systems for a total amount of more than 1.78 billion rubles. Five companies will act as service providers at once: Bell Integrator, IBS AppTest, Performance Lab, iFellow and the Ai-Teko Innovation Center.

Under the terms of the agreement, over two years, 111 different bank systems will have to be tested, including a credit register, an operational pipeline, a retail credit pipeline, a client portal, an electronic client dossier, a business planning system, a centralized ABS "New Athens," ABS "Biscuit," VTB Business Online, VTB Online, a system of salary projects, etc.

Tender^[4] in the amount of 2 103 098 466 rubles, the bank announced in December 2021. 6 applications were submitted for it, one of which was rejected by SimbirSoft due to the presence in the application of a proposal to amend the draft contract. The rest of the participants were recognized as winners.

As commented on TAdviser in the press service of VTB, according to the results of the competition, 5 companies became the winners, with each of which a framework agreement for 2 years was concluded. As testing tasks appear, appropriate applications for contracts will be formed, which will be distributed among the winners of the competition.

The press service of VTB explained that since 2019 a large-scale digital transformation has been taking place, new systems are being created, existing ones are being finalized. With a large volume and high development speed, it is important to conduct high-quality testing before putting into commercial operation. With large-scale purchases, VTB pursues a policy of choosing several winners, this reduces the risk of dependence on a particular supplier, develops competition and expands opportunities for the volume of work.

The tender, announced in December, was essentially the only major purchase of IT testing services in 2021. In addition, a tender was played^[5] the purchase of testing services for penetration of RBS systems. It was won by the Crowd company, offering a price of 960.9 thousand rubles, which was more than three times lower than the maximum purchase price. Another^[6] for the provision of services for load testing of the external infrastructure of VTB, launched in March 2021, was declared invalid, since not a single application was received.

In 2020, VTB announced 15 tenders and concluded more than two dozen contracts for the supply of testing services totaling almost 1.98 billion rubles. Including concluded a three-year contract^[7] for load testing of bank systems with five companies at once - Aplana iT Innovations, Witte Innovations, Bell Integrator, Performance Lab and iFellow for a total amount of almost 750 million rubles. The bank also signed a framework contract until 2023^[8] for integration-functional, regression and component testing of systems with IBS AppTest, Bell Integrator, Witte Innovations and Performance Lab for more than 718 million rubles.

In 2019, the bank also announced 15 tenders, following which it signed contracts for the supply of testing services totaling about 759.2 million rubles. In particular, several contracts were signed for the provision of testing services for the remote banking service system (RBS): loading, penetration, integration and functional.

Purchases of testing services by VTB Bank, million rubles.

Customer	2019	2020	2021
ВТБ	759,2	1 976,9	1 782,7

Over the past five to six years, the volume of purchases of testing services from VTB has grown by an order of magnitude. So, according to the TAdviser study (More), in 2016 the bank acquired IT testing services for 185.1 million rubles, and a year earlier in 2015 for 61.7 million rubles. At the same time, Sberbank spends several times more on software testing. So already in 2016, according to TAdviser, he purchased services for almost 2.1 billion rubles, and in 2021 - for more than 5.4 billion rubles.

Move IT professionals to Innotech for tax savings

On January 17, 2022, it became known about VTB's decision to transfer employees of its IT division to Innotech, which is 100% owned by the T1 group. The goal of this step is to save on taxes. Read more here.

2021

VTB switches to digital queue coupons in branches

On December 29, 2021, VTB announced the transition to digital coupons for queues in branches. The innovation became part of the bank's ESG strategy, which includes the principles of paperless service.

Digital coupons are available to users at VTB Online. To obtain them, you need to scan the QR code on the display of the electronic queue terminal. The system identifies the visitor and navigates the visitor. The client receives the necessary information on his phone in the form of push notifications or SMS.

At the first stage, the service is available to users of mobile devices based on Android, and in early 2022 it will be supported on iOS.

By the end of December 2021, the innovation was introduced at seven VTB branches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, and in the first quarter of 2022 it will be replicated throughout the bank's network. Next, the system will begin to identify not only the identity of the client, but also his product profile.

According to VTB Vice President Anton Shikulo, the refusal of coupons by writing through chat boat the bank, according to WhatsApp the bank's estimates, allowed him to reduce paper consumption in a single office by 2.63 cubic meters. meters per year. A new approach in the future will make it possible to completely abandon terminals, and then smartphone the client will become the "key" to the office, he said.

As part of VTB's plans to switch to paperless service in 2022, the bank will launch pre-appointment functions via a smartphone. This will allow customers to receive a digital ticket for service at points of sale in advance, even before entering the office.

VTB also introduced a system that allows you to abandon paper checks at ATMs. The client can choose the "no check" function when withdrawing, depositing cash and transferring from card to card. On average, not printing at an ATM reduces customer service time by 5-7 seconds. The service is already available in 100 VTB ATMs with an updated interface design, and in January 2022 it will be replicated to the entire ATM network.^[9]

VTB entrusted critical infrastructure to Open Source solutions

Technology companies are betting on free software (Open Source), Deputy Director of the IT Department told TAdviser SummIT on November 23. VTB Bank Mikhail Khasin According to him, a business that wants to have a competitive advantage based on technological superiority is increasing IT competencies within the company and creating structures specializing in SPO development.

According to Mikhail Khasin, the vast majority of Open Source products were built on a more advanced technological stack than proprietary solutions. SPO, in contrast to vendor developments, turned out to be more mature for cloud deployment and use, as it was created on the basis of a cloud-native approach. That is, Open Source solutions are initially focused on microservice architecture.

The new technology platform of VTB Bank has already been built on the open joint venture. As Mikhail Khasin notes, when customers use VTB Online, they use Open Source. The bank's technology stack already has 45 Open Source solutions that are involved in virtualization, databases, workflow services and instant messengers. VTB uses software such as OpenStack, PostgreSQL, Scylla, ArangoDB, Redis, Tarantool, ActiveMQ, Apache Kafka, Camunda, Tyk, etc.

The new technology platform is a critical business system. And we translate all the services and services of the bank to it. When you use VTB Online, you use Open Source technologies, "said Mikhail Khasin.

Mikhail Khasin believes that the current level of maturity of SPO products is able to provide a quick start when creating specialized solutions. At the same time, Open Source developments themselves are usually more flexible than vendor software. This draws the attention of not only independent developers to the SPO, but also major IT market players such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, London Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange.

Open Source, in addition to banks, is already actively using creative industries to create platforms and tools, for example, video editing, portfolio publishing, etc. In the gaming industry, SPO is used for cross-platform projects, for example, hybrid game engines. The coronavirus pandemic has required the formation of a rapid migration to the distance learning format, and this turned out to be possible only thanks to free and easily scalable tools for distributing any type of content built on Open Source. One of the leaders in the use of SPO was health care. According to Mikhail Khasin, in terms of the volume of attracted investments in Open Source projects, this industry will come out on top in the future of five years.

All the main myths that have existed for a long time regarding the SPO have already been refuted:

• Are Open Source solutions difficult to scale? Today, SPO solutions scale no worse than proprietary solutions, and in some cases significantly better. An example of this is projects such as Apache or WordPress.

• Is SAT less protected than proprietary? In Open Source, vulnerabilities are discovered and fixed much faster, because this is monitored by an entire community.

• Are software solutions not suitable for corporations? The largest players in the IT market not only use open source software, but also acquire development rights. For example, IBM bought Red Hat, Microsoft bought GitHub, and Adobe bought Magento.

• Do Open Source have difficulties with support? The SPO business model itself is built on support and COVID-19 proved that Open Source's technical support is not only no worse, but often better than that of vendor solutions.

• Does the SAT not fit well with the proprietary? The experience of many companies, including VTB, has shown that Open Source works much better with proprietary software than vendor solutions.

• Will the SPO fashion pass quickly? Any skeptic understands that this is not fashion, but an integral part of production: almost all IT products developed in the world contain Open Source components.

• Open code is created by amateurs? The community of SPO developers is highly professional. Many Open Source projects are very difficult to get into, so participation in them in the programming community works better than any resume.

Moreover, according to Mikhail Khasin, today Open Source is not limited to software, there is a demand for free architectural solutions. An example of such a project would be a RISK-V processor. Where the free instruction set architecture is used, the basic set of instructions with which the processor operates. That is, companies are able to create their own processors that are optimized for solving their specific problems. This approach opens up new prospects for business. The project is already supported by many IT giants, such as Google, Nvidia and Western Digital. VTB Bank is also involved in the project to create a Russian RISK-V architecture processor.

We have not yet completely abandoned the use of Oracle, however, by creating new products and solutions, we are building them on PostgreSQL, - said Mikhail Khasin, answering a question about vendor systems in the bank.

VTB will spend 9.3 billion rubles on servers with processors on open architecture

In early September 2021, it became known about VTB's intentions to spend 9.3 billion rubles on servers using processors with open RISC-V architecture. We are talking about one of the end-to-end projects that are planned to be launched jointly by the government and business for the development of the electronic industry.

According to Kommersant, VTB will implement this project, calculated until 2025, together with Arenadata, T1 and Yadro. According to the newspaper, the bank expects to reimburse 47% of expenses with subsidies from the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

VTB told the newspaper that "the introduction of an open source architecture will help solve the bank's strategic objectives, as well as increase import independence."

Yadro said that the company is developing a family of general-purpose processors based on RISC-V and will invest more than 6 billion rubles in development. The company emphasized that the use of processors on an open architecture has been announced in other end-to-end projects.

The Government of the Russian Federation also has plans to support solutions on open architectures both in the field of software (open source, OS) and in terms of hardware (open architecture, OA). Thus, ANO "Digital Economy" sent Ministry of Digital Development of proposals to stimulate the implementation of OS and OA in various industries. It is proposed to develop directives for the transition to such solutions for the public sector, to subsidize the interest rate on loans to enterprises developing servers and storage systems based on RISC-V. The Ministry of Digital Development said that by September 2021, they are preparing a strategy for the development of open source technologies in the Russian Federation.

As Kommersant notes, support for open architectures in electronics may be unprofitable for domestic processor manufacturers who have already invested in their own solutions. And they do feel skeptical about the technology's prospects.^[10]

Plans to increase the number of IT professionals in the regions to 1200

VTB July 13, 2021 announced TAdviser the expansion of the recruitment of IT specialists in 7 regional IT centers, bank which are created in cities St. Petersburg Nizhny Novgorod,,,,,. Samara Yekaterinburg Novosibirsk Khabarovsk Tyumen

In total, by the end of 2022, more than 1,200 IT specialists will work in the regions. Thus, the total number of IT employees in the regions will be 20% of the total.

This will help VTB Bank:

• ensure continuity and continuity of the bank's IT support through time zone differences
• expand the hiring funnel and attract the best specialists from all over Russia
• Optimize outsourcing and employee placement costs
• develop regional competence centers for software development

Attracting the best IT specialists and entire teams from the regions will reduce software development time and improve the quality of IT support for the bank's products. VTB is one of the largest employers in the financial sector and a modern banking organization that contributes to the development of employees, we consider it important to create jobs in the regions so that specialists can work in comfortable conditions for them where they live - without the need to relax to the capital. noted Deputy President-Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank Vadim Kulik.

In the regions, it is planned to hold mitapes for experienced specialists, as well as to attract young specialists to work at VTB. VTB's technology partner, the T1 group of companies, cooperates with local universities to organize student practices on the basis of regional IT centers. After practice, the best students will be able to undergo a long internship in the VTB IT block or from the bank's technology partners, and then receive employment offers.

EDM systems in the IT landscape

13.5 thousand IT specialists

In April 2021, it was reported that VTB 13.5 thousand IT specialists work in.

2020

VTB changed the format of cooperation with software companies

On September 17, 2020, VTB announced that as part of the implementation of the digital transformation strategy, it had changed the format of work with software companies and vendors. Previously, VTB bought ready-made solutions, and now employees of vendor companies work as part of 1,100 bank development teams to create products and services.

The bank's internal IT resources in all areas of work on any project are less than 50% by September 2020, and by the end of 2022 this figure will increase to 70-80%. The rest is the resources that vendors supply us. At the same time, we do not buy the volume of work, but hire people who, with their experience and with the responsibility of the vendor in our environment and under our management, create a product. They give specialists to our teams and ensure that these people are high-quality developers in terms of skills and workings. We manage these teams, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President-Chairman of the VTB Board, adding that now a thousand people are already working at VTB according to such a model.

Kulik noted that this is a decision that changed the market, since "it used to work, offering development only turnkey."

Since 2019, VTB has been implementing a digital transformation strategy. As part of the work, several trunk projects were launched that create the foundation for achieving the goal of the strategy - to provide 100% of financial services online. In particular, the bank is switching to a microservice IT architecture, building an omnichannel platform based on open program interfaces (APIs), creating and developing a technological artificial intelligence platform that combines the possibilities of applying modeling and machine learning methods based on the entire array of internal and external data.

As part of the digital transformation, the core of the production process is streams formed from 1,100 development teams. They include representatives of business, functional lines, IT and partner vendors. Each team owns its own product or service with fixed APIs and develops its own piece of code. The activities of each person are related to the result of the project, the result of the project - to the program, the program - to the strategy.

VTB is opening bank branches of the future. PHOTO

On August 5, 2020, VTB announced the launch of branches of a new format. It implemented changes that, according to the bank, will make offices more "smart" and environmentally friendly. It is estimated that thanks to new technologies, the average waiting time in the office will be reduced by a third.

You can make an appointment to visit a new type of office at a certain time in advance through chat boat the. In WhatsApp this case, employees will prepare the necessary documents for the client's visit in advance. And identification by arrival is available using smartphone the MAC address of the device.

As explained to TAdviser at VTB, the client in the office undergoes initial registration, during which the user's phone remembers VTB Wi-Fi as a trusted home network. The process takes place in less than 30 seconds due to automated authorization algorithms, where the user only enters the phone number, and does the rest of the smartphone on his own. This time is needed to read the QR code/NFC tag.

When the client visits again, his phone automatically connects to this network, like Wi-Fi at home. Thanks to network protocols, the smartphone creates an event of being in the department. After connecting to the Internet, the client receives a notification on his phone with a menu with services in the department and when a pre-appointment is created, the system automatically activates the recording in place. You can choose the necessary service on your phone and get an electronic coupon, but not in paper form, but on the smartphone screen. The system then navigates the visitor to the appropriate service location.

There are no fixed jobs physically separating visitors and employees in the retail service area. Instead, a specialist with a laptop invites the client to any convenient place in the department. At the same time, the specialist conducts fewer routine operations and acts as an expert, helping to find the optimal solution for the client's task and teaching the use of online services, VTB noted.

The departments will operate a system for automatic control of temperature, humidity, illumination and concentration of carbon dioxide. VTB calculated that this will reduce both emissions of harmful substances and the cost of maintaining 1 sq.m. of premises by 10% compared to the standard department.

Within the framework of new branches, up to 80% of standard actions on loans, deposits, payments and transfers, the client will be able to independently carry out through VTB-Online, up to 95% of all cash transactions - through ATMs, the bank says. When a client needs a more complex service, such as a mortgage or car loan, they will be able to get a video consultation and apply, even if the office does not specialize in these products.

One of the environmental aspects of the office will be the use of paper to a minimum. VTB cited TAdviser with data that in the bank's offices already 40% of all documents in the office are drawn up electronically using paperless service technology. Only the rejection of coupons through the use of the WhatsApp chatbot will allow you to spend 2.63 cubic meters less paper per year, say VTB.

Among other elements of environmental friendliness are blanks for bank cards of a new type. Deputy Chairman of the Board of VTB Anatoly Pechatnikov told TAdviser that VTB is promoting the use of a corn blank for bank cards for customers who want to have a physical medium. This is much more environmentally friendly than traditional plastic card carriers, he said.

VTB will open a pilot branch of the new format in Moscow in August, and by the end of 2020 such offices will appear in five more regions. From 2021, all new branches are planned to be opened in this format.

The 2020 pandemic has accelerated the launch of a new format branch on the market, in which the client will be able to perform most operations on his own and in a more convenient format for him, - notes Anatoly Pechatnikov.

Earlier, in June 2020, Alfa-Bank also opened a new type of office in Moscow. It is made in the concept of Phygital - from English physical and digital, a combination of digital and physical channels. The department is equipped with a facial recognition system, which determines the client at the entrance and transmits information about him to the employee. Among other innovations - the absence of paper media in the office: documents are signed and stored in a smartphone^[11].

IT Architecture Redesign Plans

VTB Group announced a complete restructuring of the bank's IT architecture. This became known on July 10, 2020.

IT architecture determines the possibilities bank for the speed of bringing products to market, their interaction with existing services and opportunities integration for projects at the state level, said Ilya Starostin, head of the IT architecture department, senior vice president of VTB.

According to him, VTB's updated IT architecture "will increase speed by at least 10 times and significantly reduce the cost of bringing new products and services to the market."

Traditional architectures of banking systems were developed 10-20 years ago and designed based on the needs of banks, they were based on products, and not the desires and needs of customers. The world has changed a lot, we need a client-centric business model and architecture. For the client to once again want to use the services, they must be convenient, intuitive, reliable and, importantly, personalized, - explained Ilya Starostin.

He added that the bank expects to optimize operational processes and reduce the cost of non-targeted IT systems. An additional advantage of the architecture will be the reduction in the timing of product upgrades.

Changes in the IT architecture are one of the stages of VTB's digital transformation strategy. According to the goals of the strategy, 100% of financial services should become available to VTB customers online.

According to Starostin, one of the global projects related to changes in the IT architecture is the omnichannel platform, "which will allow customers to receive all services in any channel: in the office, VTB Online application, in their personal account on the site, and so on.

For example, a client can start some kind of operation in the bank's office, and complete it in the application or vice versa, - explained Ilya Starostin.

The head of the IT architecture department added that in general, transformation on a digital basis is associated with the restructuring of the architectural landscape.

Customers don't care what IT architecture the bank has, convenience, simplicity and reliability of services are important for them. That's the way it should be. But it is the architecture that determines the bank's capabilities in terms of the speed of launch of products, their interaction with existing services and the possibility of integration into projects at the level. states For example, VTB became one of the first credit institutions to connect to blockchain the platform FTS for quick processing of applications for loans to entrepreneurs as part of state support for a pandemic, "he told[12]

Increase in the number of remote jobs 8 times during the pandemic period

VTB against the background of COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, the number of remote jobs increased 8 times - up to more than 32.5 thousand in mid-March there were about 4 thousand. VTB reported this on July 10, 2020. Thanks to the implemented changes infrastructures , more than 20 thousand bank employees can work through virtual workstations simultaneously.

The remote workplace assumes that employees have access to a specially dedicated banking infrastructure. To create such a number of remote workplaces of different types, depending on the roles of employees, high-performance ones were installed in the fault-tolerant scheme, firewalls which are able to process over 20 thousand simultaneous user connections, bank in addition, access channels in were expanded by a total of 20 GB/s. Internet The anti-attack protection system was also upgraded DDoS. During the week, new ways of secure remote access were developed and implemented.

More than 95% of the employees of the IT unit were transferred to a remote mode of operation literally within a week, while all the planned changes and updates of the bank's IT systems were carried out in accordance with the plans.

"The coronavirus pandemic has become an additional incentive for the rapid and high-quality implementation of VTB's digital transformation strategy. We quickly created jobs for all employees who could work remotely in accordance with the bank's regulatory and security requirements, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Board.

VTB plans to spend more than half of the direction's budget on the IT team

VTB plans that the share of expenses for the maintenance and development of IT specialists from the entire IT budget will be more than 50% by 2022. Already in 2020, VTB plans to increase the number of IT units by 20%, to almost 5400 people, now the group hires about 400 IT specialists per quarter.

In total, VTB employs about 4,500 IT specialists for the summer of 2020. At the same time, the bank plans to systematically increase the costs of digitalization and the development of this area. VTB's strategy includes an increase in the share of IT-related costs from 15% to 19% by 2022.

"The goal of VTB's transformation strategy on a new digital basis is 100% availability of financial services for VTB customers online. The basis of digital transformation is the work of the team, so VTB pays and will continue to pay special attention to the selection, preservation and development of employees of the IT block, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Board.

At the end of May, VTB launched recruitment for paid internships for young IT specialists, and the bank also attracts employees with the help of specialized recruiters through all channels of the credit institution: collecting resumes on recommendations from employees, including for the future - without open vacancies - Friends & Family. A new hiring tool is also used through viewing the code that the candidate wrote - HR startups.

Plans to increase IT by 20% to 5,400

VTB plans that the share of expenses for the maintenance and development of IT specialists from the entire IT budget will be more than 50% by 2022. Already in 2020, VTB plans to increase the number of IT units by 20%, to almost 5400 people, as of June 2020, the group hires about 400 IT specialists per quarter. VTB announced this to TAdviser on June 10, 2020.

In total, VTB employs about 4,500 IT specialists at the beginning of June 2020. At the same time, the bank plans to systematically increase the costs of digitalization and the development of this area. VTB's strategy includes an increase in the share of IT-related costs from 15% to 19% by 2022.

{{quote 'The goal of implementing VTB's transformation strategy on the digital basis introduced is 100% availability of financial services for VTB customers online. The basis of digital transformation is the work of the team, so VTB pays and will continue to pay special attention to the selection, preservation and development of employees of the IT block, "said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Board. }}

At the end of May 2020, VTB launched a recruitment for a paid internship for young IT specialists, and the bank also burns employees with the help of specialized recruiters through all channels of the credit institution: collecting resumes on recommendations from employees, including for the future - without open vacancies - Friends & Family. The hiring tool is also used through viewing the code that the candidate wrote - HR startups.

VTB customers will receive 200 million rubles. to pay off mortgages as part of electronic interaction with the FIU

On May 28, 2020, VTB announced that it had sent more than 430 applications for disposal of maternity (family) capital funds as part of the electronic interaction process with the Russian Pension Fund. For a month of work on the technology of data exchange in XML format, customers have already received the first confirmation of the FIU on a positive decision and used the means to improve housing conditions. At the end of May 2020, the total amount of such transfers for applications in operation exceeds 200 million rubles. Read more here.

Accelerate Customer Appeals with Robots

On May 6, 2020, VTB announced the start of using robots to process and make decisions on customer claims. At the first stage, without the participation of employees, more than 10% of all requests are analyzed and every fifth positive decision on ATM transactions is made. This allows customers to get answers to their requests faster. In the future, VTB plans to automate up to 70% of operations.

Even before starting work with the appeal, the robot unloads information, extracts, documents that the employee needs to investigate and make a decision on the claim from source systems. Also, the robot analyzes the available data for their compliance with the prescribed scenarios, if such compliance is identified, it either offers the employee a final decision for confirmation, or makes it on its own.

The robot can only make positive decisions on customer requests on its own, in other cases, employees conduct additional analysis.

{{quote "Implementation of this technology made it possible to reduce the time for making decisions on customer requests and reduce the performance of routine actions by employees. We use robots primarily for typical tasks in which it is important to exclude the influence of the human factor. At the same time, thanks to the clear algorithms developed at the bank, the quality of decisions made remains at the habitually high level, because the main task for us is a fair assessment of each client's appeal, - comments Olga Mamedova, head of the department for dealing with customer appeals at VTB. }}

Registration with Rostelecom of Big Data Platforms

On March 30, 2020, Rostelecom PJSC "" announced TAdviser that, together with PJSC "Bank," VTB they registered LLC "," Big Data Platform (Platforma) which will develop and monetize products based on processing, big data including using technologies and. artificial intelligence machine learning More. here

Plans to increase IT unit size by 20%

On April 29, 2020, VTB told TAdviser that the number of IT developers in the bank's staff at the end of the first quarter of 2020 increased by two and a half times compared to the same period in 2019 - to 715 people, the total number of employees in the IT function amounted to 4,490 people. By the end of 2020, VTB plans to increase the number of employees of the BN block as a whole by another 20% - to 5,380 people.

VTB is actively increasing the number of employees of the IT division as part of the bank's development strategy, which involves a large-scale transformation on a modern digital basis. The strategy is aimed at 100% availability of financial services for VTB customers online.

We completed the first stage of the transformation of the IT block, identified directions in it, half-updated and strengthened the management team, keeping its number, stated Deputy President-Chairman of VTB Management Board Vadim Kulik

He noted that changes in VTB's IT block have already brought tangible results.

VTB passed a kind of stress test - work in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. In a situation where almost 85% of employees of the IT unit work remotely, and the load on the bank's systems has increased several times, we continue not only to provide high-quality services to our customers, but also update and improve existing services and applications. added Kulik

Conducting an online deal to buy a car on credit

On April 27, 2020, VTB informed TAdviser about the first online transaction in Russia to buy a car on credit. The pilot took place in Moscow. While at home, the client remotely chose the car, received loan approval, conducted a transaction and purchased the car from Rolf. Earlier, VTB was the first Russian bank to issue an online mortgage loan, the borrower acquired real estate from PIK Group of Companies.

This process of issuing a loan for the purchase of a car is completely remote and does not require visiting the office. First, the client chooses a vehicle on the VTB car marketplace. Then he draws up an application for a loan there, and after its approval by the bank, he signs all documents remotely using an electronic signature. The money is transferred to the dealer from whom the car is purchased, after which its representatives contact the borrower to choose the most convenient way to get the car (home delivery or pickup is available). For April 2020, the project is piloted in Moscow and will be available to VTB customers. The first issue took place in the official dealer center Rolf Altufyevo.

The self-isolation regime due to the pandemic gave banks a powerful impetus to bring digital products and services to a higher level. To meet the needs of customers in full, it is no longer enough to simply issue cash loans remotely, as before. In this regard, the registration of collateral loans - for the purchase of real estate and transport - was a real breakthrough for the entire market. VTB was the first Russian bank to issue an online mortgage, and now it has created a completely remote format for buying a car, which will help both borrowers and the entire automotive industry. By the end of 2020, we plan to scale the service throughout the country and hope that it will be in demand even after the completion of the self-isolation regime, commented on the service Deputy President-Chairman of the Management Board of VTB Anatoly Pechatnikov

Rolf was one of the first on the Russian market to make available the purchase of a car - new or used - online without visiting a dealership. Rolf's cooperation with VTB Bank will allow us to offer our customers a remote car purchase service on credit, noted the director of the financial services department of the company Rolf Olga Boyko

VTB's automotive marketplace is one of the first in the banking market. On the site, customers are presented with a catalog that combines more than 16 thousand cars of 47 brands as of April 2020. You can book a car with a dealer, issue an application for a car loan according to two documents and then purchase a vehicle at a car dealership. All models presented on the website are available for sale. The project was implemented throughout the country.

For April 2020, a car loan at VTB is available at a rate of 2% per annum. As part of the proposal, it is possible to receive funds in the amount of 300 thousand to 7 million rubles. The loan period is from one to seven years, the decision is made by the bank from 30 minutes. Down payment from 0% of the value of the purchased car. Service and insurance services can be included in the loan at the request of the client.

Up to five times the number of remote workplaces

On April 16, 2020 VTB , he said that against the background of the development of a pandemic of coronavirus infection and the introduction of a self-isolation regime Russia in a month, more than fivefold increased the number. remote workstations

Since March 16, 2020, the number of remote jobs has been increased from 4 thousand to more than 21 thousand.

A remote workplace assumes that employees have access to a virtual one to the computer in a dedicated one. bank To IT infrastructure

The Bank did not reduce the pace of development and improvement of IT services and successfully carried out a large-scale update by more than 250 specialists who worked in a remote format.

VTB Bank was urgently able to provide remote workplaces for the vast majority of employees who can work remotely in accordance with the bank's regulatory and safety requirements. As of April 16, 2020, the deployment of remote workplaces continues. Separately, I note that the transfer of a large number of employees to remote work did not affect the effectiveness of the bank's systems, stressed Deputy President-Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank Vadim Kulik

Against the background of the introduction of a self-isolation regime and the beginning of the action of the introduced program for providing credit holidays to citizens affected by the coronavirus, the number of calls to the VTB contact center has sharply increased.

To improve the quality of customer service, the total number of contact center employees from March 16 to April 10, 2020 was more than doubled. In particular, remote jobs were created, the number of which increased multiply over the week of April 6-12, 2020.

The waiting time for VTB customers to respond to operators in the second week of the self-isolation regime (from April 6 to 12) has almost halved compared to the first week.

VTB and PIK held the first online mortgage issuance in Russia

On April 15, 2020, it became known about the first case when a mortgage was first taken out in Russia and bought an apartment completely via the Internet. The deal was carried out by VTB and the PIK group, in which a client from home purchased real estate in the Sheremetyevsky residential complex in Moscow. Read more here.

Improving the performance of information systems of the investment brokerage business

April 14, 2020 bank VTB announced the completion of the first stage of equipment updating to ensure reliable and high-performance operation of the brokerage business. The kernel trade servers and server have been updated. databases The performance, reliability and stability of information systems to loads have multiplied.

Since the beginning of the first quarter of 2020 The number of daily users of the VTB My Investments application increased by 2 times, and the number of active sessions at the time of the opening of trading on the Moscow Exchange increased by 3 times. Despite the high load due to volatility in the capital markets, the system is operating normally. Technical support is provided in full by the IT team in remote mode.

Also, in March 2020, ujlf successfully conducted an annual stress testing of VTB brokerage business information systems on the Moscow Exchange, based on the results of which all the necessary data were collected for further analysis and development.

{{quote 'author=said Vadim Kulik, Deputy President-Chairman of the Management Board of VTB Bank' Despite the high load on our information systems due to the explosive growth of clients in VTB brokerage services, we continue to increase their resistance to high loads. The first stage of the planned scaling and optimization of the performance of brokerage trading systems was carried out, and we will continue to improve the reliability and availability of our services for VTB customers. }}

March 2020 was a record year for VTB's brokerage business. The volume of transactions carried out increased 2.5 times to the average monthly indicator, replenishment of accounts - three times, the number of customers - 1.5 times. Thanks to the well-coordinated work of the VTB Capital Investments team and the IT unit, we managed to pass even the days of peak loads without failures, ensuring the reliable functioning of all systems. Providing a high-quality, reliable and convenient service for customers is our main priority, said Vladimir Potapov, Chief Executive Officer of VTB Capital Investments, Senior Vice President, Head of Brokerage at VTB

Replication of paperless service technology across the entire branch network

On March 20, 2020, VTB announced the replication of paperless service technology to the entire network of branches - 1.5 thousand offices in Russia, making customer service faster and safer. The share of transactions executed without paper media as of March 2020 already exceeds 15%, the bank's clients signed more than 170 thousand contracts in this way. VTB plans to bring this figure to 40% in 2020.

{{quote 'author=said Miguel Markaryants, Head of the Retail Business Department - Senior Vice President of VTB' Comfort and Security of Our Customers' Service - VTB's main task. In the current situation, we have developed a set of measures for their maximum convenience in the departments. One of them is the introduction of paperless services, which we decided to expand by 100% of branches in the first quarter. The use of gadgets instead of signing multi-page paper contracts halves the service process, and I am sure that customer demand for this service will only grow. By the end of 2022, we plan to carry out 90% of operations in paperless format, }}

The most popular services in VTB's paperless offices were card transactions (70%) and servicing current and savings accounts (20%). Next are the issuance of cash loans, credit cards, as well as the service of debit and credit cards. The service is available on the most popular types of credit, card and account transactions. During 2020, their list will expand - deposits, payments, transfers, escrow accounts will appear.

VTB was one of the first banks to launch paperless technology in its offices. When serving customers in the department, the employee draws up a service and forms an electronic document, and the user confirms the operation and signs all documents with an electronic signature in the mobile application. All contracts signed in this way are stored in a special section of VTB online and are available to the client at any time. The security of the technology is implemented due to a whole range of measures confirming the authorship and invariability of the document signed by the client, as well as a reliable system for storing data and electronic documents. The reliability of the implemented mechanism is confirmed by independent expertise.

VTB provided transfers worth 30 billion rubles within the framework of the SBP

Since the launch of the Fast Payment System, the turnover of incoming and outgoing operations through VTB has reached 30 billion rubles. The bank is an active participant in the SBP, occupying a third of the total volume of transfers. Most of the transactions - over 60% - are occupied by incoming payments. Most often, clients of Alfa-Bank, Tinkoff Bank and PSB transfer to VTB. This was announced on February 20, 2020 by VTB.

At the end of February 2020, VTB's share exceeds 35% of the total turnover of operations under the system. The monthly growth rate of payments is 30%. By February 20, 2020, the number of unique VTB customers within the service reached 385 thousand, which made more than 3.7 million transfers. The average outgoing transfer is 6 thousand rubles, incoming - 11 thousand rubles. A significant share of transfers - about 60% - are payments in the amount of up to 3000 rubles.

{{quote 'author=comments the head of the digital business department - VTB Senior Vice President Nikita Chugunov' The fast payment service is becoming an increasingly noticeable alternative to P2P transfers, the total turnover of incoming and outgoing payments in the system as a whole, to data CENTRAL BANK RUSSIAN FEDERATION according to, already reaches 80 billion rubles. VTB is a major player in this project: we occupy a third of the total volume of all transfers, 65 thousand of our clients are connected to the service every month. Increasingly, they make transactions for a small amount, which proves the demand for SBP for everyday payments. I am sure that 2020 will be a breakthrough for this project in Russia, }}

476 offices switched to paperless technology

On February 5, 2020, VTB announced the transfer of the entire banking network to paperless technology. The digital format of signing documents will become available to customers in the first quarter of 2020 at all points of sale - this is about 1.5 thousand VTB offices throughout the country. By the end of 2020, the share of operations carried out using technology is planned to be increased to 40%.

As of February 5, 2020, the technology is available in 476 offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other regions of the country. For three months, clients signed more than 25 thousand documents on it. The most common are card transactions (70%) and maintenance of current and accumulative accounts (20%). This is followed by issuing cash loans, credit cards, as well as servicing debit and credit cards.

The Bank plans to expand the list of transactions within the framework of paperless technology. In February, customers will be able to make deposit transactions, until the end of 2020 there will be payment and transfer options, cash transactions, escrow accounts and customer service in the Prime and Privilege segment.

Шаблон:Quote 'author=said Miguel Markaryants, Head of Retail Business Department - Senior Vice President of VTB,

At the beginning of February 2020, VTB serves more than 13.3 million individuals, in 2019 alone this figure increased by 1 million people, which became a historical indicator for the bank.

2019

Creation of a joint business with Rostelecom, in which 1 billion rubles are invested

On November 20, 2019, Rostelecom and VTB announced the creation of a joint venture, in which they will invest 1 billion rubles. Investments will be provided in a ratio of 50:50. Read more here.

Launch of the non-banking services platform

On December 18, 2019, VTB announced the launch of its Non-Bank Services Platform. It is addressed to representatives of small and medium-sized businesses. At the time of the start of the service, the following services are available in it. Read more here.

Launch of 12 pilot projects with IT startups

On November 5, 2019, VTB told TAdviser that as part of the second set of corporate accelerators for technology companies, organized jointly with the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF), 12 pilot projects with startups are being launched.

The VTB accelerator was created to search the market for ready-made innovative solutions that can optimize costs or bring additional profit to the bank through the creation of products and services. The accelerator conducts fast pilots to assess the potential business effect and technological feasibility of innovative solutions, and the most successful of them go to scale.

The second set of VTB accelerators received 301 applications from 5 countries from technology companies that meet the requirements of the bank. In September 2019, according to the results of a face-to-face demo day, the heads of the bank's business divisions chose the twenty most promising startups to participate in the accelerator.

During October 2019, the VTB accelerator team and startups with the support of the IIDF were determined with business customers in the bank, cases for piloting and criteria for the success of projects. Now 12 startups are moving to the stage of testing their solutions in the bank's infrastructure. Another 4 startups are at the pilot training stage. All global business lines of the bank - corporate investment, retail, medium and small businesses - have become business customers. After evaluating the results of pilots in February 2020, the most successful teams will have the opportunity to scale their solutions in the bank.

12 projects that will be launched by pilots with divisions of VTB Bank:

• Andata: Customer Digital Passport - Technology to identify potential customer on the site
• HintEd - Employee Training Online Assistant
• SweetCard - Personal Stories platform in a mobile bank using Machine Learning
• MobileScoring - Borrower rating service based on anonymized behavioral data of customers aggregated by partner banks
• OpenTRM - Automatic Extraction data from Primary Document Scans
• KVINT - Virtual Voice Operator Platform
• Neurodata Lab - Customer Experience Management Solution Based on Emotional Artificial Intelligence
• Botman.one - Visual designer that allows you to create web applications without the help of programmers
• HighTouch Lab - Remote verification of mobile service users
• TurboContract - Document Designer with multi-user capability
• Cybertonica Platform - Transactional fraud monitoring and adaptive user authentication platform
• FirstPoint - Evaluating Candidates with Game Testing and Emotional Artificial Intelligence

RPA in action: How robots help banks improve operational efficiency

VTB creates an ecosystem of digital services like Sberbank

At the end of October 2019, VTB announced plans to create a large digital ecosystem similar to that of Sberbank (Sberbank Ecosystem (SberX)). Credit organizations in Russia began to fight for customers with the help of services rather than rates.

As Dmitry Olyunin, the first deputy chairman of the VTB board, told Izvestia, it is planned to create an IT platform that will include a home rental service, a mobile operator, a digital accounting department, and a banking marketplace.

By October, VTB has solutions for 8 projects that are part of the digital ecosystem, and by the end of 2019 there will be even more, Olyunin said.

Four services are deployed in pilot mode: this is a virtual operator, a marketplace for VTB Mobile banking services, Unicom-24 a housing ecosystem and a fiscal data operator. Decisions have also been made on digital accounting and the B2B connection, where small businesses will be able to connect to foreign trading platforms (for example, to) AliExpress and find suppliers.

The full deployment of VTB's digital ecosystem is scheduled for 2021-2022. In 2020, projects will be put into commercial operation.

The main product of the digital platform should be the housing ecosystem. This is a platform for the selection, financing, purchase and registration of real estate, as well as repairs and further arrangement. The process of finding housing will take place in digital format and one-window mode.

VTB's intention to create a digital ecosystem became known at the beginning of 2019, when the bank posted documents on the public procurement website. The contractor was required to develop a strategy for the development of partner services, on the basis of which the VTB platform will be created. It was also necessary to determine the potential of ecosystems of competitors - Sberbank, Gazprombank and Alfa-Bank. The amount of the contract is 158 million rubles.^[1]

Testing with Visa a solution for accepting payments using a smartphone

On September 24, 2019, VTB Bank announced the start of testing, together with Visa, technology that allows you to use a smartphone to accept electronic payments in Russia. The bank will provide acquiring services for the SoftPOS mobile application for self-employed Russians and micro-business enterprises. They will be able to accept payment for the services provided without purchasing special equipment.

According to VTB, the decision will help expand the scope of use. non-cash payments To do this, it is enough to download a special SoftPOS application into your smartphone OS Android and use the device as a payment terminal in the future. The process looks the same as when you pay. in a non-contact way To make a payment to the buyer, it is enough to attach a contactless card to the seller's phone or mobile phone connected to, or Apple Pay. Google Pay Samsung Wallet (formerly Samsung Pay)

"This project is a big step forward towards complete digitalization and withdrawal into non-cash payments. In the future, we plan to provide a similar opportunity to install the application not only for Android phones, but also for all other brands, " noted' Alexey Kirichek, Head of Acquiring Department, Vice President of VTB

"Just a couple of years ago, we realized in Russia the ability to pay using mobile phones. With testing the SoftPOS solution, we take the next step forward, and the smartphone is already becoming a payment terminal. Before our eyes, there are changes that fundamentally change the idea of ​ ​ the payment process and are able to give a new impetus to the spread of cashless payments, " noted Ekaterina Petelina, CEO of Visa in Russia

Vadim Kulik - the new curator of the IT block

From September 2, 2019, Vadim Kulik was appointed adviser to the President-Chairman of the Board of VTB Andrei Kostin. He will deal with the development of information technologies, as well as the areas of risks and big data, Interfax reported.

Earlier, TAdviser wrote that Kulik will take part of the powers from the deputy chairman of the VTB board Olga Dergunova, who has been in charge of the bank's IT block since 2016.

VTB announced a significant expansion of the#.D0.92.D0.A2.D0.91_.D0.BD.D0.B0.D1.80.D0.B0.D1.81.D1.82.D0.B8.D1.82_.D0.B0.D1.80.D0.BC.D0.B8.D1.8E_.D0.98.D0.A2-.D1.81.D0.BF.D0.B5.D1.86.D0.B8.D0.B0.D0.BB.D0.B8.D1.81.D1.82.D0.BE.D0.B2_.D0.B4.D0.BE_5_.D1.82.D1.8B.D1.81._.D1.87.D0.B5.D0.BB.D0.BE.D0.B2.D0.B5.D0.BA IT block in February 2019. By the end of 2020, the staff of the bank's IT team is planned to increase to 5,000 people. VTB reported its focus on accelerating changes and bringing new solutions to market.

VTB's new strategy for 2019-2022 involves the construction of an operational and technological platform, and this is more than the introduction of information technologies, the TAdviser source explained the logic of the permutations. - To solve this problem, you need a person who knows banking products and processes deeply, with experience in their digital transformation. Kulik received such experience in Sberbank, where he was responsible for risks and IT, and in Gazprombank, where he also oversaw operating activities

According to TAdviser, the position of adviser to which Vadim Kulik was appointed is temporary. In the future, he may become deputy or first deputy chairman of the bank's board.

Launch of Lean laboratory in the Moscow branch

On August 13, 2019, VTB announced the launch of a Lean laboratory at an experimental site in one of its branches in Moscow. She began researching the bank's current business processes and testing their changes in customer service.

Among the priority tasks of the pilot project is the analysis of operations for issuing bank cards, issuing deposits and cash loans. According to preliminary results, the duration of the process of issuing debit cards in the test department has already decreased by 34%. In this regard, the replication of the solution obtained during research at the experimental site to the entire VTB office network is expected in the 4th quarter of 2019.

As of August 2019, the Lean laboratory is checking the functionality for making deposits with making money through the cash register. In the future, the proposed changes will allow visitors to receive the service from one employee and, during this operation, eliminate the need for repeated visits to a specialist.

In addition to developing approaches in working with clients, improving current business processes and testing them, Lean Laboratories will also analyze the effectiveness of internal processes. Among them - optimization of working hours of employees, redevelopment of offices, in particular, the organization of children's and other client recreation areas. All these solutions will increase the level of loyalty of visitors and affect the quality of their service.

[[:Шаблон:Quote 'author '= noted Miguel Markaryants, Head of Retail Business Department - Senior Vice President of VTB']]

VTB will accelerate the release of new solutions and products through the introduction of DevSecOps

In 2018, as part of the transformation of VTB's IT department, it was decided to gradually and preferentially switch to internal (in-house) development of IT systems and create an appropriate development unit within IT.

The DevSecOps (DSO) methodology was selected as the most appropriate set of practices and tools for a flexible and continuous change implementation process. Read more here.

Complete Your Own Cloud Strategic Project

On July 3, 2019, VTB informed TAdviser about the completion of a strategic project to build a private cloud. A single platform for flexible IT infrastructure management was created, which made it possible to optimize the cost of IT resources and speed up the process of their provision, the bank noted.

During the project, more than 200 IT systems were migrated, including 50 critical systems, the bank said. As a result of the project, the total savings on the operational activities of IT systems, according to VTB estimates, amounted to 920 million rubles. Read more in a separate article.

CommuniGate Pro Pilot

VTB Bank on June 21, 2019 announced the start of piloting the Russian communication platform CommuniGate Pro. The pilot is carried out as part of a project to create a unified corporate communication system for the combined VTB Bank. By the end of 2019, based on the results of piloting, a decision will be made on the possibility of its further industrial operation in the bank. Read more here.

VTB and IIDF launch accelerator of technology startups

VTB Bank opened the second set of corporate accelerators in May 2019, its partner will be the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF). The result of the previous set of the acceleration program, which ended this spring, was 15 pilot projects launched by the bank's business units together with technological startups.

For the new set, the bank decided to focus on finding projects and teams developing b2c marketing tools, services for retail clients and small businesses, technologies for assessing potential borrowers, services for improving customer experience, solutions for contact centers and bank branches, data collection and analysis. A complete list of project selection areas is available on the website vtb.iidf.ru. Applications for participation in the accelerator are accepted until August 1.

The acceleration program is designed for 4 months. During this time, the teams will receive feedback from the bank's functional and business divisions, will be able to finalize the technological solution and test its capabilities. In the final, the teams will present the results of their pilot projects to the bank's top management as part of a demo day. The most successful will have the opportunity to scale their solution in the bank's contour.

Implement process mining technology to monitor end-to-end procurement process

On May 15, 2019, VTB announced the introduction of a process mining solution for analyzing and monitoring the end-to-end procurement process throughout the bank. The introduction of the technology together with the implemented set of measures by the financial department made it possible to reduce the time for the procurement process by 25%, while the total number of purchases increased by 3 times.

Process mining technology allows you to collect information in real time at all stages of bank purchases. Data on all transactions, dates, purchasing types are now aggregated in a single system, making the process as transparent as possible. Also, the flexibility of collection and analysis models allows you to adapt to the changing requirements of the bank's customers' business.

The bank's team was faced with the task of implementing the solution on a complex and disparate IT landscape, which was successfully solved. The implementation of process mining technology allows you to see the entire procurement process in real time, up to a specific document: from the application to the signed contract and payment certificates. Thanks to this, we can significantly increase the efficiency of this process. In addition, we have plans to replicate the solution to other processes. 'Sergey Baranov, Head of Information Technology Department - Senior Vice President of VTB

The project was implemented on the basis of the Process Mining by Celonis solution with the participation of the contractor - RAMAX.

Biometric data collection organized in 270 branches of the bank

On March 18, 209, VTB announced the provision of customer data collection within the framework of the Unified Biometric System in 270 branches in all regions of the bank's presence in Russia. By the end of 2019, the entire VTB network will be equipped with the necessary equipment.

In order to pass biometric data, you need to become a VTB client and register on the State Public services portal. Then, with the help of special equipment, the client is photographed and recorded his voice. After verification, the data received are sent to the Unified Biometric System. For existing VTB customers, the entire process will take from three to five minutes.

author '= Olga Dergunova, Deputy President-Chairman of the Management Board of VTB The opening of 270 points within the framework of an extensive regional network means, first of all, an increase in the level of availability of government and banking services using the Unified Biometric System. In any of the equipped branches of VTB, citizens can pass biometric samples of a person and voice in full compliance with the requirements of the Bank of Russia. We actively support the implementation of the initiatives of the Central Bank to ensure convenient and safe access of the population to financial services.

author '= Anatoly Pechatnikov, Deputy President-Chairman of the Management Board of VTB For March 2019, we are developing a service that will allow you to conclude a comprehensive service agreement without visiting the office and open a master account. It will be available as early as mid-2019. Customers will be able to remotely issue deposits, savings and current accounts, make payments, transfers and other services. This will certainly increase the availability of banking services to residents and in remote settlements.

Transition to file-free data exchange with the Central Bank

On March 5, 2019, VTB transferred settlements with the Bank of Russia's prospective payment system to the updated P.R.I.S.M interaction platform, the main task of which is to ensure reliable and cryptographically secure exchange of financial messages with the Central Bank.

The P.R.I.S.M platform was developed by VTB in conjunction with Cinimex. The system made it possible not only to centralize information interaction with the Bank of Russia, but also provided a different level of protection of settlements from fraudsters and other external influences.

The complexity of the implementation and implementation of P.R.I.S.M in the bank was due to the scale of VTB's business and the existing IT landscape built on four ABSs (automated banking system). As a result, a secure file-free data exchange was created with the ability to flexibly configure the rules for delivering financial messages to the Central Bank.

VTB Bank, one of the leaders in the development of a promising payment system, abandoned file exchange with the Bank of Russia and made the transition to a file-free system, which will significantly speed up payment processing. 'Valery Chulkov, Member of the Management Board of VTB Bank '

author = Olga Dergunova, Deputy President-Chairman of VTB Bank I am pleased to announce that our team has introduced and successfully implemented this platform in a short time. Ensuring the reliability and safety of customer interests is our absolute priority. I am sure that the P.R.I.S.M system will qualitatively change the level of protection of financial communications with the Central Bank.

VTB will increase the army of IT specialists to 5 thousand people

By the end of 2020, VTB intends to increase the number of its IT specialists to 5 thousand people, the bank said in February 2019. By the end of 2020, it is planned to attract about 2.3 thousand IT specialists, of which 1.5 thousand employees - in 2019.

The main emphasis will be on the selection of developers, analysts and testers, say VTB. In addition, the bank will attract project managers, architects, administrators, support specialists and in other specialized areas.

The key technologies that VTB is already using and is further interested in developing are distributed data processing on the platform Spark (ecosystem), Hadoop continuous assembly of code delivery (implemented using, Atlassian Gitlab,, Ansible Terraform) and real-time mass service systems (in Erlang, Elixir). The Bank intends to pay attention to the development using and, Docker Kubernetes as well as technology for implementing distributed prototypes and applications in the language. Go (Golang)

In 2018, about 1,000 new IT specialists were hired by VTB and the bank is interested in further significant increase of its own IT competencies. The bank is primarily aimed at accelerating changes and bringing new solutions to market. This goal will be achieved through the formation of a modern microservice IT architecture, the implementation of DevSecOps methodology and tools, the active use of cross-functional commands, and the development of Open API technology.

In the era of digitalization, successful business is impossible without the active use of information technologies. The quality of the offered banking products depends on them. VTB is interested in supporting and developing the most modern technologies, which is why we are aimed at expanding and strengthening the bank's team with first-class IT market specialists not only to support current business processes, but also to create technologies for breakthrough business development, "said Olga Dergunova, Deputy President - Chairman of the Board of VTB Bank.

VTB will join the ranks of the largest IT employers in Russia with 5 thousand IT specialists. In 2017, the leader here was Sibintek, Rosneft's main IT contractor, where at that time the number of IT employees was almost 14 thousand. It was followed by Sberbank with about 11 thousand. IT professionals.

In 2018, Technoserv came under the control of VTB. 49.99% of the company belongs to TS-Holding, the share is pledged by VTB, and VTB directly acquired 40% in the company.

Growth in the number of VTB-Online users by 56%

On February 6, 2019, VTB announced that the number of VTB-Online users in 2018 increased by 56%, to 6.3 million people. At the same time, 84% of them use mobile devices for banking operations. The share of online users for the first time in VTB's history exceeded half of the total number of active customers. Sales of online deposits for the year increased 2.7 times, the issuance of loans - almost 6 times. Read more here.

Chief on the front systems of Sberbank Vadim Sharobaev moved to VTB

In January 2019, Deputy Head of the IT Department Vadim Sharobaev was appointed to VTB Group, who switched to a new job from Sberbank. Read more here.

2018

Syntellect Tessa EDMS Development and Support Project

From January to December 2018, Synthellect implemented a project to develop and support the system based on the TESSA platform for VTB Bank. The number of users of the system is 60 thousand people. Read more here.

Development of cross-border settlement service

VTB Bank is developing a cross-border settlement service based on distributed register technologies. As of November 6, 2018, the service is in deep development. It may enter commercial operation in 2019, but the exact dates have not yet been announced.

author '= Alexey Vladimirovich Chubar, Head of VTB Bank's Digital Transformation Inside the bank there is a prototype of the technology for building settlements using distributed registers, which we have tested inside ourselves and understand how it works. A number of technical tasks are solved, including performance issues, the number of transactions that can be carried out in a unit of time.

This technology is applicable for transfers between individuals, organizations or companies. The choice of a platform for cross-border settlements will depend on the distribution geography of^[2].

Launch of electronic document management system with FSSP

The Bank VTB Federal Bailiff Service Russia has completed a project to fully replicate electronic document management all types of resolutions, as well as requests for accounts and balances for all categories of debtors through a single one. service of interdepartmental electronic interaction This was TAdviser reported by VTB on October 11, 2018.

The electronic document management system centralizes the processing of requests and resolutions of the FSSP throughout the country. It processes more than 11 million requests and almost 1.5 million decisions per month, as well as reduces the processing time of documents and reduces the bank's staff costs.

In order to automate the implementation of FSSP resolutions, more than ten bank systems with minimal manual support are integrated into the service. The developed automated technology covers all stages of the execution of the document: from the search for the debtor and the seizure of funds in his accounts to automatic monitoring of the receipt of funds and recovery.

Also, the bank has introduced a multi-stage system for identifying debtors - individuals, excluding the provision of information or the implementation of the FSSP resolution in relation to a third party who is not a debtor in enforcement proceedings.

Integration of VTB and VTB24 IT systems, launch of foresite projects

The consolidated VTB Bank's Q1 and Q2 2018 reports on key IT projects in 2017 and the first half of 2018.

In the 1 quarter of 2017, VTB Group's IT strategy for the 2017 - 2019 period was approved. During 2017, work was carried out on a number of key initiatives as part of the implementation of VTB Group's IT strategy until 2019. The initiatives relate to the development of IT in VTB Group, optimization of end-to-end business processes using modern technology platforms and IT tools, the introduction of methods for flexible development of products and services, improving the stability of existing systems and building a unified IT infrastructure of the combined bank.

The updated application "Mobile Bank" on the iOS platform has been launched. The new version of the mobile application significantly simplifies registration, facilitates navigation, and retains the ability to enter and confirm fingerprint operations.

A solution was implemented to automate the opening of current accounts for small business customers Easy bank, which made it possible to reduce the period of opening a current account, customer service time and minimize labor costs for employees. The key stage of the project on the implementation of big data tools using free software has been completed, the GAUSS system has been deployed, a single analytical source system for the formation of analytical and management reporting of the transactional business.

Within the framework of VTB 24 (PJSC) joining VTB Bank (PJSC) during 2017, a large-scale (22 large areas) complex of work on the integration of bank information systems was carried out in a short time.

When moving to the target IT architecture, the IT systems of both banks were harmonized: both retail and corporate business received unified IT systems, and general bank IT systems were unified. Special attention is paid to ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of the joint bank from the first day of work in terms of settlements and payments, preparation of joint reports, interaction with regulatory and regulatory authorities.

In 2017, VTB 24 (PJSC) joined VTB Bank:

• transfer of assets/liabilities of VTB 24 (PJSC) to VTB Group and VTB Bank (PJSC);
• centralization of the preparation of mandatory management reporting;
• centralization of interaction with the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Bailiff Service;
• transition to unified systems: personnel accounting and payroll; Procurement support and cost planning electronic document management for employees of the parent organization and the branch network of the retail business;
• Consolidating IT Support
• implementation of a single retail product line, cross-repayment of loans to retail customers, implementation of cross-operations;
• implementation of a single menu at ATMs, a single online bank, a new website;
• servicing retail bank customers at any point of sale;
• implementation of the unified infrastructure of the combined bank: single accounts, domain, mail, telephone network; file shares, support portals.

Significant IT investments include data center upgrades, telecommunications infrastructure, desktop infrastructure, and user support systems. The work on the VDI branch network desktop virtualization project has been completed, 14 thousand virtual desktops have been transferred to VDI, and work is planned to further scale the proven solution. The platform of VTB's private cloud and new infrastructure services has been deployed, and about half of the bank's TOP-50 information systems have been successfully migrated to the cloud.

For most migrated applications, the cost of IT infrastructure has decreased (by an average of 52%), application performance has increased by 1.5-5 times.

As part of the digital transformation program, a systematic approach to innovation is used. In 2017, five foreground projects were launched: Data Monetization Service, Unified Identification System, Unified Communication System, Digital Transaction Service, Digital Settlement Service.

Business partners have been identified and working groups with representatives of business lines have been formed to implement the foresight projects.

As part of the implementation of the Single Identification System (client authentication using biometric technologies), a prototype system has been created that includes authentication (own, through the public service portal and through social networks), biometric identification and the user's personal account. As part of the Forsyte project, the Data Monetization Service has created an analytical space that allows you to develop an analytical sales support tool and use predictive analytics methods. It is planned to implement the introduction of the service into commercial operation. As part of the implementation of the Service of Digital Transactions foresight project (support for the conclusion of paperless transactions based on distributed register technologies - blockchain), typical scenarios are being developed within the framework of the Fintech Association working group. A prototype solution has been created.

In the 2nd quarter of 2018, VTB Bank completed the transition to a multi-stage system for identifying debtors when fulfilling requests from the Federal Bailiff Service of Russia (FSSP) for accounts. The implemented project made it possible to exclude cases of erroneous write-off of funds. Now, when executing requests from the FSSP, the bank checks individual clients additionally by TIN, details of the identity document, address of residence and place of birth.

Within the framework of the implemented project between VTB and the FSSP, electronic document management is carried out through the Unified Service for Interdepartmental Electronic Interaction (SMEV 3.0).

Together with the company, Technoserv Consulting the Bank has implemented a system that allows you to reduce the package of documents for making a loan decision, as well as speed up the customer service process by three times, thanks to the automation of scoring processes.

For customers in the VTB-Online mobile application, the Bank has launched a number of new features that greatly simplify the use of the service. The main innovations of the mobile bank include tracking the status of readiness of the issued card, the address of the delivery office and the planned date of its receipt, as well as the registration of a PIN code for the new bank card directly in the mobile application. Customers also got the opportunity to independently choose the required amount of a pre-approved loan, for which confirmation using SMS or a push code is enough.

The Bank converted the work of the Supervisory Board into a paperless format by launching the BoardMaps communication platform (hereinafter referred to as the BoardMaps System). The new software makes it possible to significantly optimize the processes of preparation and holding of meetings of the Supervisory Board by creating a single communication space in accordance with all safety requirements. BoardMaps makes it possible to significantly simplify and speed up the work processes of the bank's collegial bodies using mobile technologies, improve security when working with documents, as well as optimize labor costs associated with the preparation, conduct and design of meetings.

The planned migration of the IT infrastructure of the automated banking system (ABS) of the ex-Bank of Moscow to the VTB private cloud platform has been successfully completed. As a result, since May 2018, the Bank's operating costs have decreased by 10 million rubles per month due to the removal of outdated equipment from technical support. Also, the time for performing the most important background processes in the system - closing the operating day, processing loans, and also reduced the operating window for performing data backups - decreased by 3 times.

Mastering the Agile development methodology

In July 2018, VTB Bank announced an open request for proposals for information and consulting services in the form of training on flexible development Agile for teams. It is planned to spend almost 5 million for these purposes. rubles^[3]

The contract contractor will have to conduct 33 trainings on 3 topics by December 31, 2018. 13 trainings will relate to the basic course on Agile Scrum-. Students will be able to learn about the principles and approaches in project management, Agile philosophy, Scrum process structure, Agile-style business projects, self-organizing teams, etc. Up to 260 bank employees will have to listen to this course.

The topic "Scrum Master" will be devoted to 10 trainings. The course will have to be mastered by no more than 10 students. As a result of the training, participants will need to know, understand and apply key principles and approaches for scrum masters, Stand Up meetings, team skills and various types of motivation for the team, facilitation skills during discussions, etc.

The third theme is called "Product Owner." Within its framework, listeners (no more than 10 people) will have to learn about the role and tasks of the Product Owner, interaction with stakeholders and parties interested in the product. In addition, bank employees will have to familiarize themselves with the work of user stories and Backlog maintenance, planning and setting goals for sprints and releases, tools for scaling commands, etc.

The target audience for all trainings is employees of departments participating in VTB Bank's dynamic projects.

The results of the request for proposals are planned to be summed up on August 31, 2018.

At the end of April 2017 VTB Bank , he signed a contract with the Russian division McKinsey&Company to develop a detailed IT strategy for 2017-2019 and a program for its implementation. One of the key initiatives of the strategy was to be promotion flexible development techniques (). Agile Services were estimated at 293 million rubles.

Office without people

VTB intends to open the first fully automated office in Moscow, which will not be serviced by human employees. This was announced at the Moscow Urban Forum by the head of the bank Kostin Andrei Leonidovich, VTB Interfax news agency reports in July 2018 ^[4].

Kostin described the future office without people as "honestly, not very practical." He formulated the goal of the project as follows: "Just to show people what can be done - without people. Try, see what it is.'

Kostin believes that as technologies develop, the traditional scheme of human service in banks will still continue. He compared automated service and meeting customers with human employees with watching a football game on a smartphone and going directly to the stadium, "where emotions are, where people are."

He also spoke on the topic of forecasts that in the future technology companies will assume, among other things, the functions of banking institutions, and as such there will be no more banks. In his opinion, such a replacement will not happen.

VTB's transition to a multi-stage debtor identification system

VTB Bank on June 27, 2018 announced the completion of the transition to a multi-stage system for identifying debtors when fulfilling requests from the Federal Bailiff Service of Russia (FSSP) for accounts. According to the bank's expectations, the implemented project will eliminate cases of erroneous write-off of funds.

Now, when executing requests from the FSSP of Russia, the bank checks individual clients additionally by TIN, details of the identity document, address of residence and place of birth. At the same time, in the banking market, identification of debtors is mainly carried out only on two grounds: full name and date of birth.

As part of the project between VTB and the FSSP of Russia, electronic document management was also implemented through the Unified Service for Interdepartmental Electronic Interaction (SMEV 3.0).

The debtor identification system will eliminate cases of erroneous write-off of funds. In turn, electronic exchange of documents speeds up the receipt of information, reduces the cost of preparing and exchanging data and, as a result, increases the efficiency of the credit institution and the federal service. VTB is one of the first banks operating under this system, - said Valery Chulkov, member of the board, head of the operational support department of VTB's business.

In the near future, the bank intends to switch to electronic document management with the FSSP of Russia by all types of decisions (search with arrest, arrest, recovery, cancellation) through SMEV 3.0.

Implementation of a single platform for corporate business

On April 26, 2018, VTB announced the transfer of the group's divisions to the unified information platform "Corporate Business Portal." The project provides for the introduction of tools for cross-functional interaction of group employees, a platform for the operation of the call center of the bank's corporate business, and also involves the use of intelligent information processing algorithms.

Main article: VTB PKB Corporate Business Portal

Interview with VTB Senior Vice President Ivan Pyatkov TAdviser

In February 2018, Ivan Pyatkov, head of the digital business department, senior vice president of VTB, in an interview with TAdviser, told how the bank transfers customers from branches to remote banking channels (RBS) and how remote channels of VTB24 and Bank of Moscow were combined during the merger with VTB.

2017: New Chief information officer - Sergey Baranov

In September 2017, a new head of the IT department of VTB Bank, Sergey Baranov, was appointed. In this position, he replaced Dmitry Nazipov, who in June 2017 went to work at Gazprombank. Read more here.

2016: Key projects of VTB Bank

A significant share of investment in IT is the cost of upgrading data centers, developing telecommunications infrastructure, workplace infrastructure, and user support systems. In 2016, VTB completed work on the creation of a new group data center, according to the report for the 3rd quarter.

IT support for the reorganization of the Bank of Moscow was provided and work continues to provide IT support for bank support for the state defense order in accordance with No. 275-FZ "On State Defense Order."

VTB continues to work on a number of key initiatives as part of the Group's IT strategy. They relate to the development of IT in VTB Group, the optimization of IT expenses, the development of a group data warehouse and decision support systems, the unification of ABS of VTB Bank's parent organization, the modernization of the settlement system, the development of middle office systems, RBS and general corporate IT systems, and the development of IT infrastructure.

In 2016, the bank began a project for the transition of the RBS system to a more modern and technological platform of the new generation - CORREQTS, according to the report for the 3rd quarter. VTB expects that it will improve the quality of customer service, maintain the effective operation of the system, taking into account the projected growth of the client base and payment volumes, increase fault tolerance, as well as reduce costs in the development of new system modules.

Work continues on a project to create a customer support center (CCP) for large business clients. As part of its next one, an IT solution will be implemented that allows expanding the CCP on the territory of operational support centers and increasing the number of large business clients transferred to service in the CCP on operational issues and on transactional business products. The bank also continues work on the VDI branch network workplace virtualization project and the VTB Bank private cloud project, according to the Q3 report.

2015

Key projects of VTB Bank

In 2015, a number of automated information systems related to the main areas of VTB Bank's business were developed, according to the report for the 1st quarter of 2016. The functionality of existing systems has been expanded, new functional tasks have been introduced in the field of automation of investment, transaction, credit and deposit business, risk management, strengthening the security of payments and settlements.

The portfolio of IT projects during 2015 included more than 50 projects, 12 of which were completed, the report says. Among the completed projects is the replacement of the financial transaction hub platform. VTB Bank notes that it has significantly increased the performance, scalability and resiliency of the settlement system, to ensure the development of interbank interaction with VTB Group banks and other financial institutions without the participation of the SWIFT network.

Virtualization technology was also introduced for 100 automated workstations at the operational support center in Voronezh. Due to this, the bank was able to transfer centralized operational back-office functions for servicing clients of the parent organization to remote execution. This was done in order to reduce the bank's operating expenses.

In 2015, the RBS system introduced functionality to expand the list of available settlement tools and make working in the system more convenient and faster for customers, increasing the level of service in the field of cash management, according to one of VTB's quarterly reports for 2015.

In 2015, the bank continued to work on a project to unify ABS of its parent organization, the purpose of which was to prepare an IT platform for the upcoming merger of banks and switch to unified targeted business processes of the parent organization and the branch network of VTB Bank. In addition, the bank carried out work on the implementation of the client portal of VTB Group.

Chief information officer VTB24 optimistic about possible sanctions

Answering TAdviser's question about the risks associated with possible restrictions on the supply of American software to Russia due to the political situation, Sergey Rusanov, director of the banking and information technology department of the VTB24, said in February 2015 that his bank regards them as minimal.

"We are optimistic and think that after all the situation will develop in an optimistic way, since it has already gone far enough. Therefore, we consider such risks as minimal, "he said

.

In 2014, VTB24 completed the construction of all elements of the base target platform, which is based on various Oracle products . The automated banking system, unlike many Russian banks, VTB24 also uses imported ones. According to Sergei Rusanov, in the event of tough sanctions, a collapse in the bank's work will not happen: it will be able to continue supporting existing systems. Problems may arise with the development of systems and with new projects requiring new software and updates, he believes.

In one of the banks of the VTB Group - "Bank of Moscow" - earlier in the same month told TAdviser about the ongoing experiments related to the import substitution of system software. The bank, in particular, is exploring the possibility of migrating its ABS to PostgreSQL DBMS, and is also looking at alternatives to replace Microsoft OS and middleware such as IBM WebSphere.

Sergei Rusanov told TAdviser that the Bank of Moscow in the group is the flagship for developing the strategic direction of import substitution. According to him, while work in this area at the Bank of Moscow is more likely to be attributed to NIR than to business tasks.

Other banks of the VTB Group "optionally" participate in the development of this direction together with colleagues from the Bank of Moscow, says Rusanov. The experience of the Bank of Moscow, he adds, is planned to be subsequently extended to the entire group: "if they achieve any results, we will include this in the plans, taking into account the current external situation."

Rusanov stressed that import substitution is a task for all organizations with state participation - it is necessary to think about this issue and prepare plans for possible import substitution in order to become less dependent on Western suppliers in the event of an aggravation of the political situation.

2013: IT Development Plans with Focus on Data Centers

The infrastructure plans announced by the Chief information officer VTB Dmitry Nazipov in June 2013 are largely related to the development of its own data centers. At that time, VTB had four: DPC

• in the Federation Tower, where the company's office is located,
• the first stage of the Vorontsovskaya data center,
• centers on Plyushchikha and Lesnaya streets.

The bank planned to abandon the last two in 2013 and launch the second stage of the Vorontsovsky data center in a separate building. In 2014-2015, the Perovo data center and the archival center in St. Petersburg were to be added.

The policy of transferring data centers to regions where electricity is cheaper, practiced by many companies and operators of the data center market, Nazipov did not seem correct, since "electricity" in the company's IT costs is a small share. Attached to the supplier of electricity, you find yourself in full dependence on him, as experience shows, none of them is insured. And pulling fiber to the regions is not cheap, they argued in VTB. In the Moscow region (and in the future - in St. Petersburg) there is always an opportunity for maneuver - both in terms of energy supply and in terms of communication channels.

For similar reasons, call centers are also located in Moscow - the personnel capacity of the regions is relatively small, the creation of a new center can leave existing ones without staff. In Moscow, it is easier to find a replacement for retired employees.

Another important task for the coming years is the development of the corporate information system, the introduction of systems of the scale of the entire group of companies, the unification of IT management tools, the "lifting" of various data from subsidiaries to general group systems, the creation of a single register of customers, etc.

The law of FZ-223, which regulates the purchase of companies with state participation, which includes VTB, will have a great influence on the procurement activities of the group, including in the field of IT. According to Nazipov, its use makes it possible to save up to 20% of funds^[5].

2014: VTB IT Modernization Results 24

On February 18, 2015, at a press conference, Sergey Rusanov, member of the bank's board, director of the banking and information technology department of VTB 24, spoke about the stages of the bank's transition to a new target IT platform, the interim results^[6]

The main reason for making a decision to replace the target platform, according to Rusanov, was the growth in business volumes observed since 2009 - it required a different approach, and, accordingly, more information about customers

All this led to a paradigm shift in the development of IT in the bank and at the same time marked the beginning of a strategic partnership with Oracle in 2011. The Bank has identified a strategy for the transition to a new platform, according to which the basis for its key IT architecture should be a certain number of powerful industrial systems, their integration on the Oracle platform. It was also planned to introduce the management of marketing companies on the Teradata platform. These initiatives were implemented during 2012-2014.

Completed IT implementations

• By the beginning of 2015, as a result of the transition to a single front-office solution on the Oracle Siebel CRM platform, about 26 thousand bank employees work within a single automation system, performing sales and service operations from a single interface, observing the history of contacts with the client and prepared personal product offers.

• The introduction of the Oracle Fusion Middleware integration bus helped connect more than 40 of the bank's IT systems. This technology, according to Sergei Rusanov, serves more than 15 million customers in Russia through any communication channel, including a call center and Internet banking. The technology ensures the interoperability of legacy and embedded systems, allowing you to quickly replace one system with another, without front office downtime.

• A single client directory was created on the Oracle Master Data Management platform: 40 million client records were loaded into a single storage, cleaned up and associated with common directories.

• A corporate data warehouse was organized (on the solutions platform, and Teradata SAS BI), Oracle Exadata into which data from the bank's systems are loaded and stored: these are more than 2.4 thousand servers, including Oracle SuperCluster systems, and HP IBM DSS Hitachi EMC are located in seven Moscow with a total DPC area of ​ ​ more than 1200 m2 and in 68 ^server rooms.

The listed projects helped the bank get full information when interacting with the client, in any of the channels and expand the list of services available to customers. As a result of IT modernization, key indicators of the bank have improved, characterizing the activity of its retail block, stressed. Rusanov

The bank's investment in IT in 2014 - 9.3 billion rubles. In 2015, they will amount to 8.3 billion rubles^[7]. Over five years, $180 million VTB24 invested in the IT platform.

The best banks choose the best solutions, and these are the infrastructure products of American vendors, - said Sergey Rusanov. - Import substitution is a long and painstaking job.

2012: Results of informatization at VTB

The main achievement in 2012, according to VTB representatives, was that the concept of managing the IT function in the group was created. On the one hand, the IT policy of the group should be unified, with general standards of service provision, service level agreements, project management methods, etc. On the other hand, "daughters" and "granddaughters" should have sufficient room for maneuver, since, for example, in different countries, business conditions and regulatory requirements differ significantly.

Therefore, the complete unification of business applications at that time was not planned - it is too difficult and expensive, although unification is possible for individual product classes. But VTB has a common licensing policy - the parent company concludes, if possible, a single agreement with the vendor, and all companies in the group have the opportunity to buy software at the same, very attractive prices.

In 2012, the IT budgeting process was launched - a methodology for planning expenses within the framework of the general process of budgeting subsidiaries was developed, verification and coordination of expenses on information technologies of subsidiaries for 2013 was carried out. This year, it is planned to carefully study the structure of expenses in order to reduce them - for example, due to the mass procurement for the group as a whole. Regulations will be developed for the preparation, coordination and control of IT expenses of subsidiaries. The plans for 2014 include the introduction of a unified methodology for planning and controlling IT expenses in subsidiaries.

To streamline project activities, standard documentation was developed, which will guide subsidiaries in launching new projects and providing reports on those already underway. In some "daughters" on the basis of these documents, work is already underway. Based on their results, project management processes will be properly adjusted.

VTB IT Passport

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IT passport VTB24

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