The CEO of Post Bank announced that the law of banking operations does not allow investment in high-risk areas and the bank’s focus is not on VCs
According to Iran digital economy annotation, The CEO of Post Bank announced that this bank plans to carry out more activities in the field of digital banking in the second step of its development path. However, he stated that the bank does not independently invest in startups and this is the task of the managed funds working group.
“Behzad Shiri”, CEO of Post Bank of Iran, in a meeting with economic and banking activists, pointing out that Post Bank is the only bank in which the most institutional and legal developments have taken place during the years of its establishment, said: “Post Bank is a bank. It is governmental, developmental, specialized and stock market with general shareholders in underserved areas. He also pointed out that this bank should always be accountable to the shareholders and the private sector due to its stock market status.
In response to the question, whether Post Bank intends to enter the innovation ecosystem and invest in startups or not? He explained: “We are connected to the Ministry of ICT and this ministry is in charge in some areas. There are a number of topics such as managed funds that have their own regulations. The regulations related to managed funds say that resources are used based on the creditor’s opinion; It means that there is no efficiency necessarily.
In fact, through this working group, investments will be made on startup groups that are subject to support in the future and with plans approved by the managed funds working group, and we do not do anything in this field independently.
“Our second step is towards digital banking”
In another part of his speech, the CEO of Post Bank mentioned the prospects of this bank. He believes that Post Bank should start its second step. Shiri explained: “One of the variables of this step is digital banking. Last week we started offline account opening services. For example, we launched a virtual assistant based on artificial intelligence.
Such cases are the variables of the second step of Post Bank, which has a special focus on digital banking and intends to advance electronic development along with physical development. He also mentioned that this bank is also considering the establishment of PSP in line with the development of its payment services.
According to him, there is still a gap in the technology holding and investment arm in this area, and Post Bank is considering developing plans in this area. He also said: “Since the law of banking operations does not allow banking to invest in high-risk areas, most banks have brought VCs to their subsidiaries. This law says that before investing, it must be ensured that the return is high; Therefore, our focus is not so much on VC funds.”
He also said: “The amount of government shares in this bank was 51 percent of the government and 25 percent of equity shares, which reached 15.3 percent with the transfer of equity shares. This number decreases in each period and overflows to other people.
Shiri also continued about the situation of Post Bank branches: “We have a total of 6,200 points of contact with the community. This number is more than other banks. In total, we have 11,416 human resources, some of whom work in the private sector and some in the public sector.
According to the CEO of Post Bank, the ratio of human resources in terms of gender in this bank is fair and almost equal. (49% of women and 51% of men)
Regarding the loan default rate of managed funds, Shiri also said: “The default rate in this sector is close to 8%, and our own default rate is 2.8%; Because the rate of managed funds is a support rate, because it supports a sector that has sales problems and lack of market, and is supposed to be settled with this loan. He pointed out that minus this eight percent, all resources have returned and have been allocated to economic actors again in the facility payment cycle.
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