The new technologies will change the type of services offered by banks, but not the nature of the banking activity. This was stated by the Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer of UniCredit Bulbank Levon Hampartzoumian in his lecture before UNWE students. He delivered the first out of a series of lectures Business Master Class, an initiative of UniCredit Bulbank, during which top managers of the bank will share their experience and knowledge with students from different universities.

Hampartzoumian presented to the students his own vision of the future of the business and banks and commented on current topics such as the bitcoin currency, the digitalization of industries, the FinTech companies. “Before we say what will change, it is good to say what won't change: even in 20 years, our need for financial intermediation will not change“, firmly states Hampartzoumian. In his words the nature of banks will remain the same as it has been for 500 years - they will keep people's deposits, put aside some reserves and provide loans. “It seems very simple, it has worked in a different way, has become more complex, but this is the basis and it won't change."

The other thing that will not change, according to Hampartzoumian, is the necessity of having perfect relationships between the banks and their clients. The banker thinks that the client is in the center of the offering of services, and the financial services are just one type. What is new, in his words, is that the halo of secrecy around the bank services is falling down and they, just like the utilities, are turning into services accessible 24x7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week). The financial services will be getting more and more accessible, at a more and more reasonable price and increasingly diversified. "Each one of us in the future will be able to build his or her own model of financial service according to his or her needs and resources, just as if putting together Lego bricks and pieces“, Hampartzoumian outlined the future. "Some people call this digitalization, but it is not the goal. The goal is a better and more accessible service, while digitalization is just a means to an end", commented the Chief Executive Officer of UniCredit Bulbank.

"The bitcoin as a currency, in the very moment of leaving the circle of its supporters, cannot be accepted", commented Hampartzoumian on the idea of the money of the future. According to him, the possibility of the bitcoin becoming the new currency which will take over the world is too unrealistic, but technology could be used by traditional banks for improving their services. "We should not simply disregard an idea as being unfeasible, but take the best out of it", thinks Hampartzoumian.

With regard to the entry of FinTech companies in the sphere of banking activity, Levon Hampartzoumian stated: "If you have recently read about the death of banks, - well, these authors are ahead of time. Until the need for financial services exists, banks will be there, too".

The banking business is turning into administration of large systems and databases, carrying out processes in real time, which require huge IT resource. People, highly competent in the field of IT, will be needed, because if IT was only one of the systems supporting the banking activity in the past, now it is turning into the core of the bank. "If you ask me for advice, there are two things you should study: Accounting, because this is the financial mathematics, and information technologies", the banker addressed the students. According to Hampartzoumian, just like applications for smat phones are developed now, in the following 10 years industrial applications will be created and anyone with basic skills in the IT field will be able to develop applications for the business he or she works for.

In the banking business the fight for the client's loyalty will become extremely important. Because of the numerous channels for providing the service, persuading a client to choose and trust a certain institution will become increasingly harder and more valuable and the efforts in this direction should be continuous according to Hampartzoumian. "When talking about clients, we inevitably come to the question of trust. While a corporation can be recognized as successful even having very aggressive policies, even on the edge of the law, this is not the case with the banks - we depend on the trust of our clients and on the good relations with them", the banker stated.

Levon Hampartzoumian also referred to the topic of frauds: "The new technologies give opportunities not only to us, but also to the criminals to think of ways for obtaining resources. This is an endless struggle between wanting our customer service to be easy and accessible, which presupposes speed, convenience and minimal procedures and meanwhile to be protected from "the bad guys", commented Hampartzoumian. In his words there should be a balance between the desire of banks to protect as much as possible their clients' data and the excessive complication of the procedures for the purpose of protection.

"The bank industry is the type of business where the human factor is of great importance; there is no way for you to have happy clients serviced by demotivated employees", added Hampartzoumian. Although even more services are provided online, for a certain type of services the clients want to face a bank employee. UniCredit Bulbank constantly measures its employees' satisfaction from the management, the work organization, the remuneration and corrects its activity according to the results from the surveys among its employees. Levon Hampartzoumian pointed out, that in the future the bank service in the branches will be transforming from performing ordinary financial operations (something the clients can already do by themselves online or via mobile banking) to providing personalized financial services and consultations.

More information for media:

Vitoria Blajeva, Phone: + 359 2 9264 993, wjlj/ebwjepwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Mara Bareva, Phone: +359 2 9264 963 , nbsb/cbsfwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Beatris Nikolova, Phone: +359 2 9232 528, cfbusjt/ojlpmpwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch