Raiffeisenbank has launched a remote loan application service working via social media and messengers. It is designed to attract new clients, who live in cities that do not have Raiffeisenbank offices.

RBC reports that the service, which the bank is testing since May, operates in VKontakte, Telegram and Viber and covers 50 cities with the population of over 100,000. Raiffeisenbank plans to expand to 41 cities where it has offices, mainly regional centers.

Viber (44%) and VKontakte (30%) were the most popular choice for applications in the testing period, and Telegram, which is banned in Russia, was the third most popular with 26% of the total number of applications.

Raiffeisenbank launched remote lending in early 2019. Initially the borrowers could apply via the app, and non-clients of Raiffeisenbank could apply only on the website. Over just six months, including the testing period in social media and messengers, the bank accepted 100,000 applications and provided loans in the total amount of over RUB 500 million.

“The launch of remote lending enables Raiffeisenbank to substantially expand the geographical coverage without having to open new offices, and the clients can use modern banking services in the cities where they used to be inaccessible,” said the bank’s Campaign Manager Ivan Karpov.


For this purpose, the Bank of Russia launched the Unified Biometric System (UBS) a year ago. However, data collection and client identification via UBS is not widespread at the moment, so Raiffeisenbank decided to increase its client base in a different, more traditional way.

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