TCS Group dressed up – Newspaper Kommersant No. 44 (7489) of 03/16/2023

TCS Group, whose main asset is Tinkoff Bank, during 2022 again significantly increased the number of employees – by 1.5 times, to 65 thousand people. The need for this is due to the development of the client base and the increase in business volume. However, its financial performance declined: the net profit of TCS Group decreased by 67%, to 20.8 billion rubles. In 2023, the bank came under blocking EU sanctions, which could affect expansion plans and the group’s financial results.

Holding company of Tinkoff Bank TCS Group in 2022 published IFRS reporting. It follows from the document that the group has sharply increased the number of personnel: by 48%, to 64.9 thousand people. Overall personnel costs showed a commensurate increase — by 53%, to RUB 69.3 billion. At the same time, expenses on employees directly related to customer acquisition grew less dynamically, by 7% to RUB 11.4 billion.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, in April 2022, the group changed its main owner: the owner of 35.08% became holding “Interros” Vladimir Potanin (another 64.92% are in free float).

In February 2023, the bank came under EU blocking sanctions.

However, the expansion of the staff began even before the changes in TCS Group: in 2021, the number of personnel increased by 68%, and the costs for it increased by almost 1.9 times. This volume includes personnel working under civil law contracts, which the bank hires to deliver cards to customers and process documents. Last year, the bank had a labor conflict with some of the employees working under such contracts, which escalated into litigation (see below). “Kommersant” dated September 10, 2022).

Tinkoff Bank explained to Kommersant that the increase in the number of personnel in 2022 was due to “expanding the client base and developing new business lines, as well as supporting the IT infrastructure.” “The number of retail customers increased by 39% over the year, reaching 28.9 million people; revenue in 2022 increased by 34%, to 366.2 billion rubles,” the bank emphasized.

However, the financial results of the group were not too impressive.

The consolidated financial statements include a bank, an insurance company of the same name, MFO T-Finance, and a collection agency Phoenix. Net profit of TCS Group in 2022 decreased by 67%, to 20.8 billion rubles, against the backdrop of increased credit risks, volatility in the markets and the curtailment of lending in the first half of the year. The geographic concentration of assets disclosed by the group has changed dramatically over 2022. Assets in non-OECD countries rose sharply last year, from RUB 9.8 billion to RUB 40.5 billion, while assets in OECD countries more than halved to RUB 16.7 billion.

The dynamics of the number of employees in other banks in 2022 was not uniform. For example, Raiffeisenbank increased the number of employees by 210 people, to 9.5 thousand people, Unicredit Bank reduced its staff by 22%, to 3.4 thousand people, OTP-Bank – by 21%, to 6.9 thousand people .

Olga Blednova, director of the practice of providing consulting services to companies in the financial sector Kept, noted that many banks are now looking for the potential to optimize their headcount.

“So far they have identified several key areas where, as they think, there may be a potential release of numbers. These are service, IT and front office,” the expert explains. The prerequisites are usually a focus on automating business processes, on the allocation of self-service zones for customers. This, according to Ms. Blednova, can be about the development of digital channels and the application for a product by the client independently through a mobile bank or Internet bank, as well as typing frequent customer requests and redirecting them to chat bots, other self-service zones or automated services.

Olga Sherunkova