In 2020 was the 30 years anniversary of the Bank. In the beginning of 2020 we bent all our efforts to the holiday celebration arranging and launching a particular line of ESG agenda: establishment of a new eco-office with the application of energy saving technologies, shift to paperless technologies etc. Meanwhile, as the international Covid agenda expanded, several points have come to the fore: health care of our clients and employees, maintenance of consistency of banking services.
Establishment of the assigned team on COVID-19 and timeous designing of our monitoring scheme allowed to gain preventive antiviral measures.A range of instruments allowed the Bank to provide the necessary protective measures, they are: «open doors» office mode, installation of automatic disinfectors, plastic dividers for working places and client servicing stations,multilevel remote working system and designing of diverse remote access channels.
The key topic for us is the enhancement of financial literacy of SME representants. The workshops held by the Bank of Russia with participation of the representants of our Bank help emergent entrepreneurs to look into complicated issues of economy in a more professional way.
This year we improved the accessibility of our offices for physically challenged people and re-engineered our products what sufficiently reduced the number of office visits of our clients.
Our financial results allowed us to pay more attention to charity, youth outreach and supporting gifted students. Lectures held by the top team of the Bank allowed the young specialists to become engrossed in the world of real business and understand peculiarities of banking through real cases.
2020 was the year of explosive development of ESG across the world and Russia was not an exception. It may seem that this focus area is feasible only for major market players, but we believe that exactly the «minor steps theory» allows us to change the world successively and globally.
2020 was the year of explosive development of ESG across the world and Russia was not an exception. It may seem that this focus area is feasible only for major market players, but we believe that exactly the «minor steps theory» allows us to change the world successively and globally. In reliance on that approach, we leant on the supporting of credit-linked initiatives for smaller and mid-sized businesses as the part of the country's economy which is focused on the improvement of lifes of average citizens, modernization of transport environment, applying of medical equipment etc. These efforts were appreciated by the business community — The Bank has become a prizewinner of the Eurasian award in the field of finance leasing in Russia and Eurasia in 2020 in the nomination «The most technology-savvy bank for the clients» and a prizewinner of 5-th all-Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry contest «The best bank program for SME ─ 2020» in the nomination of «The most technology-savvy regional bank».
The last year we were intensively focused on eco-optimization of working procedures of the Bank. We systematically reduced the level of used resources: light, water, heat. A remarkable breakthrough was during the conversion to paperless technology of electronic document exchange both within the Bank and when working with our clients and contractors.
We are at early stage of long ESG path yet, but we already have done some important steps forward.
We are sure that we will do a lot more things with your support!