Moscow, Russia — 21 July 2017.
Oleg Tinkov, founder and Chairman of Tinkoff Bank, gave an interview to Digital McKinsey team as part of their research called Digital Russia: the New Reality. In his interview, he spoke about the digital revolution in the Russian financial sector and its impact on banks.

Mr Tinkov thinks that today, Russian digital banks are dozens of years ahead of foreign traditional peers. Sooner or later, most users will switch to digital banking, while traditional branches will be pushed to the sidelines. Oleg Tinkov also shared his ideas on which segments will show the highest growth rates thanks to digital technologies: private investments in the securities market, mortgage market, and service for SME technologies.

Going forward, Mr Tinkov expects to see consolidation in the banking sector, larger banks and fewer medium-sized and small players. Such consolidation will not only be driven by the regulator’s crusade against unscrupulous bankers, but also by the very incapacity of small and medium-sized businesses to make sufficient investments in new technologies. According to him, banks will survive, but they will play a different role on the back of transformations in payment infrastructure. At the same time, he says, the financial market will still retain tough competition. But the new players will hardly be able to follow the leaders' path to success — talent shortage will make it difficult for them to build a strong team, which is key to digital transformation. In his view, it is all about people: «Digitisation, or IT, is not the only catalyst of the revolution in the banking industry. One of its key drivers behind that is that young and smart talents with a mathematical background came to the banks».

In its research, McKinsey recognises Tinkoff Bank as one of the most successful fintech startups that has evolved into a world-known digital major. Experts praise the Bank’s ongoing contribution to technology innovation and its efforts to set up an easy-to-use branchless digital financial platform.

McKinsey names digital transformation as a key driver of global economic growth. The research claims that by 2025, digitisation will boost Russia’s GDP by RUB 4.1–8.9 tn, or 19–34% of total GDP growth. Today, digital economy accounts for 3.9% of the country’s GDP, a half or one third less than in the US and China, the leaders. At the same time, analysts say, it is expanding. Its further development will promote higher living standards as it will rely on user friendly digital and government services, economic benefits for skilled labour, new employment opportunities, effective healthcare and education systems, comfortable urban environment, etc.

The Digital Russia: the New Reality project focuses on key trends in the development of the country’s digital economy, and overall impact of digital transformation on the national economy and households. Digital McKinsey’s research team includes over 2,000 experts from all over the world, including over 800 developers, designers, IT architects, data processing experts, Agile technology specialists, and consultants in advanced analytics.

The full text of the publication is available here. For the full text of the interview with Oleg Tinkov, see page 88.