President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon.
How are you, Mr Gref?
CEO and Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank German Gref: Thank you, everything is fine.
Vladimir Putin: How are things going?
German Gref: Everything is going well.
Vladimir Putin: How well?
German Gref: Mr President, we completed a record dividend payment in August. This year, we paid out 787 billion rubles in dividends, the highest amount ever in the Russian market. No company has ever reached this level so far. We hope to surpass this record next year.
We also expect to achieve a profit this year roughly six percentage points higher than last year, which means dividends will be even higher next year.
Vladimir Putin: This reflects the financial institution’s solid stability.
German Gref: Yes, we have all risks fully under control.
This year, of course, our growth is modest due to challenging macroeconomic conditions. Some of our portfolios are slightly contracting, particularly the consumer loan segment, while others are expanding, but only at a slow, single-digit pace across the board.
Mortgage lending this year will also be lower than last year. Issuances are expected to decline by roughly 5–7 percent compared to last year, while the overall market is projected to drop by about 10–15 percent.
Overall, all our other portfolios are expected to deliver positive results this year. While performance is slightly below our initial expectations, it is still a good outcome given the challenging year.
We are also continuing to advance our technological capabilities. Recently, we introduced a completely new payment technology to replace Apple Pay, which had been discontinued. Apple Pay had been a very popular mobile payment method, but when the NFC port was closed, Russians could no longer use it. We developed a technology that replicates this functionality via a Bluetooth connection, which cannot be blocked. In the first month after its launch, a large number of users immediately began paying with their phones again. The system is fast, convenient, and completes transactions in just a second.
Vladimir Putin: We need to develop our own technologies.
German Gref: Technologies that don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Two such examples are face payments – we already have 1.3 million terminals across the country that accept them – and Vzhukh, a very fast Bluetooth-based payment technology, which is why we named it that.
We are completing many projects this year.
Vladimir Putin: Does the device read your face in fine detail?
German Gref: We designed a small terminal and reduced its cost to $55, making it affordable. Facial recognition normally requires a 3D camera, which is very expensive. At that price, installing 1.3 million terminals would cost a lot of money, making payments unprofitable.
We developed a very low-cost terminal and have been rolling out 1.3 million of them across the country over the past two and a half years. From Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, facial payments are now accepted everywhere – on buses, in the metro, and in all other places.
Progress is gradual, Mr President, but steady.
Vladimir Putin: Excellent. Very good.
Thank you.
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