Digital innovation in retail and SME products and user experience has driven success for Raiffeisen banka a.d. Beograd. Zoran Petrovic, Chairman of the Managing Board, reveals how the bank simplified processes, increased efficiencies, and attracted new clients as part of its bold, ongoing transformation journey.
Global Finance (GF): What are the bank’s signature digital products and services, and what differentiates them?
Zoran Petrovic (ZP): As part of our five-year transformation journey, we’ve launched or improved several digital products and services. We have two “signature” offerings:
- iKeš (iCash) – a fully online personal loan, available for both existing and new clients. Minimal additional documentation is required, making the approval process 10-times faster.
- iRačun (iAccount) – a fully online digital current account, available in 15 minutes. It comes with a digital debit card plus immediate access to the MB app and digital wallets.
These products are available for retail and SME clients, enabling us to meet the needs of more customer segments.
GF: How have you made complex banking and payments processes more simple, while also enhancing the user experience?
ZP: We are increasingly providing customers with simplicity and speed. For example, at the end of 2024, we introduced a one-click payment feature for investment funds. In its first six months, it accounted for a 70% share of customers’ total investments, helping Raiffeisen Invest surpass EUR 1bn in AUM.
More recently, we became the first bank in our market to introduce deep link technology for peer-to-peer payments. This allows clients to send and request money without inputting recipients’ information. Our SME customers can now see and approve invoices via one simple and convenient customer interface: our mobile banking app. Over 25% of these clients are already using it and 98% of all outgoing payments use digital channels.
Further, in addition to providing real-time information on SME accounts and transactions, our AI tools analyse past behaviour of SME clients, enabling better cash flow predictions to help plan their finances.
GF: How effective has your strategy been in attracting digital customers?
ZP: Since launching iRačun (iAccount), more than 250,000 customers – mostly individuals – have opened fully digital accounts with us. Last year, we achieved 50% market share in the total number of customers opening online accounts across Serbia. We also became the biggest SME bank with over 100,000 active clients, nearly doubling our client base in only two and a half years.
In addition, our mobile app is the most widely used in Serbia, with over 500,000 users, and has the highest ranking on app stores. Finally, we’ve seen double-digit growth in the total number of active retail customers year-on-year, driven by digital customer engagement efforts.
GF: Given innovation is core to a successful digital offering, what’s your approach?
ZP: Everything we do starts with the customer. We understand who they are and what they need, and then innovate in the design of our products and services to suit them. We can quickly identify and seize emerging opportunities by applying the “permanent agile innovation organisation at scale” approach used by the best tech companies globally. That includes hiring and developing the best talent. To make all that possible, there is close collaboration between the business, our IT function and external resources. They work as one team with common goals.
GF: What’s next on your digital agenda?
ZP: We will continue to digitally empower our clients and employees, fulfilling our vision of being Serbia’s digital bank with a human touch. To do this, we created specialist teams and programmes to ensure the adoption of AI. With mobile expected to become the primary touchpoint with our clients, we will ensure we have the necessary tools and capabilities.
Making SME lending faster and more efficient is one of our key areas under development. We also see strong potential in further scaling our investment business by allowing clients to open investment accounts fully online or purchase international stocks directly from the mobile app.
We will also continue to make daily banking tasks even easier and more enjoyable by implementing world class UX standards and extending mobile self-service capabilities for customers’ accounts, cards, and profiles.
Through these initiatives, we plan to celebrate our 25th anniversary in 2026 by reaching the milestone of one million active clients.
