Sphere bank

"Sphere" is the digital bank for small business created by the BKS Financial group. In addition to business settlement and cash services Sphere offers entrepreneurs of service of online accounting, electronic document management, financial analytics and legal advice bureaus.

Information technologies in bank "the Sphere

2021: Start of "Factory of client experience"

The Skolkovo Foundation announced on February 9, 2021 a project startup "Factory of client experience" in division of BKS of Bank – an ecosystem Sphere for small business.

"The factory of client experience" is a creation of a permanent cycle of production of value propositions for an ecosystem on the basis of deep requirements analysis of clients – Design Thinking which will help the Spheres team to become even more flexible and customer-oriented. The main objective of such approach – to create a response, the offer for clients in the form of products and services in response to yet not closed requirements and before they become mass in the market.

For effective communication and emotional connection between bank and the client it is necessary to use the last achievements of science, relevant analysis techniques of behavior of the person. We suggested BKS to Bank to create "Factory of client experience" on a basis the practician of our residents and EY. The project at the first stage assumes improvement of the current process of bank on start of relevant products and services. Further digitalization of "Factory of client experience" and use of instruments of neuromarketing is supposed. Creation of neurolaboratory together with residents Skolkovo can become the next stage of the project which will allow to test quicker hypotheses for microsegments of small business on the basis of an emotional response of respondents, implementing the strategy of customization and Customer Centricity fully. told Pavel Novikov, the director of the center of innovations in the financial sector of Skolkovo Foundation

Development of any product, business cannot be provided without a feedback from clients. In the field of digital it is one of the main skills, crucial competence of a command. The successful product is a function from the number of experiments and from that, the hypotheses how precisely formulated meet the requirements and consumer expectations. We expect that the project with Skolkovo Foundation will help our team with it. noted Igor Viryasov, the head of Sfera bank

According to forecasts of analysts, the financial industry will undergo significant changes by 2025 – about 30% of revenues of traditional banks can leave to new players. "The factory of client experience" will allow to enrich the pipeline of products and services with other hypotheses through the client's prism, providing the solution and anticipating business needs using the flexible digital Spheres platform.

History

2020: The former top manager of Ukrainian Alfa Bank headed Sfera neobank

On June 8, 2020 TAdviser knew that the ex-area director of small and medium business in "Alfa-Bank Ukraine" Igor Viryasov headed neobank for entrepreneurs Sphere. It will help bank to become more "human" and to strengthen positions in a segment of small and medium business. Read more here.

2018: Opening of bank

On September 18, 2018 there was information that the BKS financial group opened digital bank for small business Sphere. Together with banking services clients of Sphere will be able to use services of online accounting, electronic document management and financial analytics.

Clever assistants will help with Sphere to the companies and to individual entrepreneurs to calculate taxes and salary on the STS of 6% and 15%, will offer templates for documents and also will warn about financial risks. Also will offer clients legal aid in a personal account of Sphere.

The project investment cost made 1 billion rubles, the head of Sphere Dmitry Kostenko told. The CEO of Sphere reported that the bank considers the possibility of purchase of the companies which solutions can be integrated to the platform.

As the development strategy "BKS of Bank" we selected creation of digital universal bank. "Sphere" is the first business started within implementation of our new strategy. We consider that the concept of digital bank assistant meets in business requirements of small business — Dmitry Kostenko told.

He explained the solution to integrate services in the single interface with the fact that, at that time in the market "there was no product meeting all needs of business".

According to him, capabilities of assistants to Sphere continuously develop. The majority of functions is already available to clients, at the same time the complete functionality will be implemented until the end of 2018, the head of digital bank added.^[1]

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