On December 13, the Higher School of Economics held a round table on "Financial Technologies and the Future of the Banking Sector" jointly with the Bank of Russia. Vadim Kalukhov, the director of the department of financial technologies, projects and organization of processes of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, made a report on the main trends and key projects of the Bank of Russia in the field of FinTech.
Vadim Kalukhov spoke about the implementation of the project on creating remote identification mechanisms to provide financial services using the Unified Identification and Authentication System initiated by the Bank of Russia and implemented jointly with the Ministry of Communications and Rosfinmonitoring (The Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation). He talked about the work on studying the technologies of the distributed registry, including the creation of the Masterchain prototype, the basic network for the exchange and storage of financial information based on the blockchain, which was developed with the involvement of leading technology companies and banks of the country.
"Until recently, financial technologies have one by one ignored studying the scientific and technological development," said Alexander Sokolov, director of the Foresight Center of the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge at the Higher School of Economics.
During the presentations, the round table participants touched upon a wide range of issues of technological development of the financial sector, including taking into account the Russian specifics.
Alexei Arkhipov, Director of Development of cryptotechnologies of QIWI Group, noted the strengthening of the trend for further personalization of banking services. He also said that it is necessary to unite the efforts of market participants within existing and emerging consortia for the development, testing and further application of financial technologies, including distributed registries.
Alexey Blagirev, Director for Innovations of the Bank Opening, spoke about the features of management and organization of innovative projects in the field of financial technologies. He stressed the difficulties of building a long-term strategy for the development of the bank in conditions of accelerating technology development.
Dmitry Khalin, director of the department of technological policy at Microsoft, notes that the global process of digital transformation is changing the models of business management in all segments of the economy. So, in the banking sector, already now, under the influence of the development of cloud and other technologies, there have been fundamental changes, where IT companies and banks are rapidly converging.
Alexei Chubar, adviser to the Deputy President-Chairman of the Management Board of VTB Bank, summarized the trends that transform the banking system, stating the positive role of the FinTech in terms of reducing costs. He also noted the active role of the Bank of Russia in the development of financial technologies in our country.
Dmitry Bulychkov, project director of the Centre for Technological Innovations at Sberbank, told how the work is being done to develop and adapt the technology of the distributed registry in the country's largest bank. In particular, he noted successes in the implementation of this project, in spite of a number of difficulties encountered by the developers.
Anton Arnautov, editor-in-chief of Bankir.ru, stressed that joint efforts of interested market participants and regulator are necessary for the development of startups in Russia. In his opinion, startups can also be successfully developed on the sites of the leading universities of the country.
In a series of questions and answers, moderated by Yuri Dranev, head of the quantitative modeling of the Foresight Center of the Institute of Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge of the Higher School of Economics, the participants of the roundtable discussed the topics of developing financial literacy in the adaptation of financial technologies, the influence of the FinTech on the prospects for growth in the banking sector, exacerbation of problems with cybersecurity, regulation of financial and others. Of particular interest was the problem of changing the personnel structure and requirements for competencies as a result of the transformation of banks, as well as under the influence of the spread of artificial intelligence technologies and robotization.
In conclusion, it was proposed to continue meetings with the Bank of Russia on the  Higher School of Economics site  for a more detailed discussion of the most important problems in the development of financial technologies that were identified within the framework of the round table in the next year.

Based on materials: press services of the ISSEK.