The future belongs to a human-centric economy: Gref called artificial intelligence a priority of Sber’s strategy

The group is betting on next-generation AI.

The priority of Sber’s new strategy will be artificial intelligence (AI). The head of the bank, German Gref, spoke about this at Investor Day. According to him, this will allow the bank to transfer most of its decisions online, create a smart AI assistant for clients, and also “democratize technology.”

Sberbank intends to switch to a human-centric business model and develop “new generation” AI in 2024-2026, Gref said at the presentation of the new strategy. Previously, the priority of the strategy for 2021-2023 was the development of the ecosystem, and the bank will continue to develop it.

“Our goal is to ensure that we can make the vast majority of our decisions automatically based on AI, leaving the most complex, perhaps the most difficult to design products and satisfying the most complex human needs for manual operations,” the top manager said.

According to Gref, no special knowledge will be needed in order to use these complex systems, and we will help eliminate the so-called digital divide throughout the country. These services will be available to everyone.

“Everyone will have the opportunity to benefit from AI, and our focus will be on creating safe, accountable and trusted AI,” he said.

In turn, Deputy Chairman of Sberbank Kirill Tsarev emphasized that it is impossible to build a human-centric business model without an ecosystem. According to him, the ecosystem will continue to develop its non-financial services and connect new companies to them so that they “can reach” their clients.

The Supervisory Board of Sberbank approved a new three-year development strategy in early November. As Gref said then, this strategy is “very non-trivial”; it is very different from what the bank did before. “We chose human-centricity as the main theme of the strategy and worked a lot on this topic,” said the head of the bank, German Gref.