Business news

MINSK, 18 October (BelTA) – The National Bank of the Republic of Belarus (NBRB) will continue laying the legal, methodological, and technological groundwork for digital transformation of the banking sector, Chairman of the NBRB Board Pavel Kallaur said at the opening of the 14th international forum on banking information technologies BankIT’2017, BelTA has learned.

“Digital technologies have a great future. In this respect, the NBRB will keep working on the legal, methodological, and technological groundwork for digital transformation of the banking sector. We are open for discussion of any proposals on introducing innovative technologies in banking,” Pavel Kallaur noted.

The NBRB top official remarked that further measures to re-engineer business processes in banks, which lead to customer-centered policy, technological and organizational flexibility, are pretty evident. “The customer-centered approach is directly related with new possibilities of data collection and processing that help create the customer’s digital profile. This brings the bank-customer relationship to the level where products and services are produced and offered in accordance with the customer’s preferences, intentions, and financial capacity. The banks that are already developing and introducing flexible IT platforms along with ecosystems of open innovations and project-based approach in management will cope with the development of such products and services,” Pavel Kallaur clarified.

He stressed that re-engineering of business processes will affect accounting, which is a quite costly activity for banks. “With a view to centralizing the collection of information from banks in a single format, a project has been launched to establish an automated information system of banking information. The first stage of this system became operational as from 4 July. It helps banks share data within the framework of cooperation with government bodies and agencies,” Pavel Kallaur remarked.

The following stages in the development of the banking information system, which will be implemented in the medium term, envisage gradual expansion of its functions in terms of collecting information during banks’ business days in real time. This will help banks cut down transaction expenses on the aggregation of data for accounting purposes and thus will reduce the burden on customers in terms of the payment for bankign services.

“We also address the matters of information security in finance. We are currently carrying out a project to set up a center to monitor and counter cyber attacks in finance in Belarus (working title FinCERT). As the international practice shows, the center will help mitigate the damage from crimes in finance and will help undertake preventive measures to tackle emerging threats to information security in our country. The monitoring center will make part of the NBRB and will become a new structure for Belarus’ financial sector,” the NBRB top executive underlined.

The 14th international forum on banking information technologies BankIT’2017 is taking place in Minsk on 18-20 October. The forum has gathered more than 1,500 executives and experts in finance, IT and management from over ten countries. The program of the forum will include 14 breakout sessions, including discussions featuring more than 60 speakers. A major block of topics comprises modern requirements to IT banking platforms, data management, digital cooperation with clients, and the use of the block chain technology in the banking sector.

BankIT is the only specialized event in Eastern Europe that bring together top managers of banks, IT companies and other business sectors, and also representatives of state stakeholders and experts in IT development. Since 2004, the forum’s participants have been successfully interacting in addressing top-priority tasks, effectively using the opportunities provided by the forum’s organizers. The number of BankIT participants has been growing every year. In 2011, the event was visited by over 820 managers and experts finance, IT, and management. This number exceeded 1,400 in 2016.