Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, has announced the launch of a new corporate online banking platform in partnership with IBM that it hopes will deliver an enhanced banking experience for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

SMEs account for over a third of Sberbank’s corporate loans portfolio. The firm have stated that the previous platform could not handle the increased online activity from clients as it engaged with digital services and as such turned to IBM iX, an interactive arm of the tech giant, to create a new banking solution for corporate customers.

Using Design Thinking methodology, IBM iX, and Sberbank created an online banking platform featuring a digital marketplace aimed to maximize the ease of purchasing key products and services.

Anatoly Popov, senior vice-president of the corporate business unit at Sberbank, said: “The amount of offline operations performed at Sberbank branches by corporate clients shrinks by 25 per cent every quarter, as more clients wouldn’t accept any other way of communication but digital. Our goal is to have no more paperwork in communicating with our clients by the end of 2017.”

Evgeny Sokolov, partner and leader of IBM iX, added: “For us, the most exciting part was that we gained business trust and worked closely with Sberbank's clients, focusing on their actual needs and converting them into a totally new solution. This is a successful collaboration story which united all capabilities of IBM iX including consulting, design and web development in creating an innovative digital product for the market.”

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