Sberbank CEO Herman Gref has held a Q&A session with the bank’s employees today and expressed readiness to build one of the best organizations nationwide and across the globe, capable of responding to the challenges of times.

We present the most noteworthy statements of Sberbank CEO, collected from Banki.ru.

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I am not a big fan of bank cards. I use them because there is no other choice. Generally, I make payments by Apple Pay. I dream about the day I will have no cards in my pocket. They are an atavism, essentially.

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Sberbank will robotize 30% of cash transaction centers in 2018. The process of mass automation is already underway. But our workers don’t need to worry about losing their jobs to robots, because they have enough time to adapt. We are flexible, our attitude should remain adequate, and tomorrow, robots won’t come asking for our jobs.

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We have the highest number of projects on blockchain. They are still in the testing regime, though. We experiment a lot. Perhaps, we will be able to introduce some products industrially. The blockchain technology is one of our tricks. I believe we will introduce it within eight or nine years.

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I often say I don’t like banks and bankers. I dislike many a person in that sense. I won’t be crying if we have no banks and bankers tomorrow. The point is how prepared we are to stop being those banks and bankers and start functioning as an ecosystem. If our clients no longer need the banking service, we will cease providing it. We should be like water. We should be ready to provide any service demanded in the market. The main mission is to build a flexible organization that is capable of providing the best service to our clients. If it is banking today, then we are a bank. If it is e-commerce tomorrow, then we start dealing in e-commerce. Is it development of intellectual property the day after tomorrow? We will migrate to that field. We will build one of the best organizations nationwide and across the globe, capable of responding to the challenges of times. It will be an organization everyone is proud of: the staff, the clients, the citizens.

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