Why Fintech Is Overtaking Banks and Where a Human Is Indispensable

Fintech is pulling ahead while banks are playing catch-up: what makes this race interesting for clients and investors, RIAMO was told by economist Konstantin Tserazov, former Senior Vice President of Otkritie Bank.

Why Clients Are Leaving Banks for Fintech

More and more Russians are turning to non-banking organizations for financial services — the same loans, for example. Why? It's convenient! User comfort, speed of decision-making, and no need to visit an office. Fintech efficiently issues small loans, concludes insurance contracts in one minute and in three clicks. Classical banks strive not to fall behind, but if some complexity arises, the client still has to go to an office, take a ticket from the electronic queue, and wait — that's inconvenient.

Without Live Communication, the Client Does Not Make Decisions

Of course, when it comes to large sums for management in the stock market, the client wants to communicate personally with a human being, to feel trust. Soulless AI chatbots only cause irritation. But in all other cases, digital should be the primary focus.

How Banks Compete with Fintech Companies

Banks feel the competition. What's the solution? Integrate digital services into both the website and the app. This can be achieved either by growing a fintech division inside the bank or by forging partnerships with successful financial startups. By the way, digital is also very much needed by banks themselves. For example, at Otkritie Bank, where I was Senior Vice President, we transferred a third of our employees to full-time remote work. The quality not only did not suffer — it improved.

Where the Government Supports Fintech in Russia

In my view, the Moscow region has created excellent opportunities for the development of fintech companies. One of the key hubs is the Dubna Special Economic Zone. It's important that here you can open your own data center — because for financial services, you need powerful hardware that serves as digital "brains," quickly processing information. For Russia, which has its own energy resources, it is important both to rely on them in developing advanced financial services — including those based on smart contracts and blockchain — and to conserve them, thinking about efficiency, which has become especially relevant in light of the Middle East crisis.

Support from the authorities is consistently felt. Given the trend toward import substitution, fintech companies can apply for government grants with a maximum subsidy of 2 billion rubles. Reporting during the monitoring period has been reduced by more than half.

Can a Client Become a Fintech Startup Founder

The development of fintech is always driven by grassroots initiative. We all use banking applications, and they must keep up with the times. If we see something wrong, we have our own ideas on how to fix it. That's why banks create departments for collecting client suggestions. At the same time, every client today is capable of launching their own fintech startup — not just as a user, but as an investor. And if certain conditions are met, they can count on government support.

How AI Is Changing the Competition Between Banks and Fintech

By the end of the year, over 80 AI projects will be launched in the Moscow region. Where neural networks increase productivity, that's where they belong. In light of this innovation, competition is unfolding between banks and fintech companies. But not over who will implement "more" AI. Globally, it's considered that the financial organization whose employees use more tokens in neural network queries is the most advanced. In reality, there is no linear correlation here.

The main thing is to find a balance between what AI does and what the organization's employees do. Those banks and fintech companies that find the "golden mean" will be the ones to pull ahead.

Why Trust Remains the Key Factor in Finance

For the strategic development of a company in the financial sector, one must fully, in a human way, sense the client's needs — including on an emotional, non-verbal level. Competition for a client is about the ability to speak the same language. At the same time, businesses are increasingly concerned about the risk of declining critical thinking among employees with frequent use of neural networks.

Neural networks are changing many people's thinking, and this must be taken into account. They are forming new coordinate systems in the minds of millions regarding the demand for financial services. AI can become an assistant, a filter in bank-client communication — or it can become a barrier. Solving these tasks requires collaboration with the client, whose evolving financial needs remain the focus of both banks and fintech startups.