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CEO and Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank German Gref: Mr President, I would like to say a few words about our performance results for last year and the beginning of this year.

We ended the year quite successfully. Our net profit increased by approximately six percent last year to 1.58 trillion rubles. Return on equity stood at 24 percent, while our target was 22 percent, so we exceeded it by two percentage points.

Deposit growth continues. This year, we have seen a substantial increase in funds placed on deposits. We slightly reduced the interest rates because the loan portfolio is not growing, and we do not need so much liquidity. Nevertheless, deposit rates remain very high, which naturally attracts customers. The comparative efficiency of keeping money in deposits exceeds all other options for safe investment.

We have a large number of customers. Nevertheless, we are still growing. Currently, we serve 110 million individuals and 3.5 million corporate customers.

You always ask about small businesses and mortgages. This year, we are seeing growth in small businesses, though it’s modest. Small businesses will most likely continue to grow, but mortgages currently present challenges.

Mortgages today – even under preferential programmes – are either non-profitable or generate negative returns for banks.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Due to regulation?

German Gref: Yes, we have very strict regulation. Of course, mortgages are a concern for us. Banks are ready to issue mortgages with zero profitability because they are interested in preventing a decline in housing construction, given our huge portfolio in construction projects.

Therefore, we are now making efforts and have already reduced mortgage rates. This year, we expect inflation to decline, and interest rates should fall accordingly. So, we are working to create conditions that stimulate mortgage growth. But our market share in mortgages is 55 percent, and in construction projects it is around 60 percent. We remain the largest bank in terms of involvement in this sector.

Vladimir Putin: The main thing is that banks themselves do not exacerbate the situation when issuing mortgages by introducing additional elements unfamiliar to citizens that entail extra costs.

German Gref: No, Mr President, we do not have that.

I would also like to mention two technological developments. After certain services left the Russian market, particularly Apple, we used to be the largest provider of Apple Pay services – a very convenient service where you could tap your phone on a terminal to make a payment. Apple blocked NFC functionality for Russia. In 2022, we decided to develop our own solution to ensure complete independence from any external providers.

We have addressed the issue of biometrics. Biometric payments have not posed a problem for a long time now. We employed mathematics to make facial recognition 100 percent accurate.

Over the past 18 months, we have installed 1.2 million facial recognition terminals across the country. This number will increase to 1.5 million by the end of the year. In particular, we are installing such terminals in transport, including the metro, in large cities, wherever people can use face pay. You no longer need plastic cards or telephones, which makes you independent of any providers.

Vladimir Putin: You pay with money but use your face to do so, am I right? This is good.

German Gref: Russia is the only country where this issue has been resolved, and using face pay is very convenient indeed. You can just smile at the screen to make the payment. It only takes a fraction of a second.

No technology can be 100 percent safe against crime. Criminals have learned to deceive payment cards, and so on. Yet we have not registered a single instance of fraud with the facial recognition technology over the past 18 months.

Last year was challenging for us because we were installing terminals, which is a big investment, and people were only learning to use the new technology. But our turnover in the first three months of 2025 was larger than that of the entire previous year.

Vladimir Putin: I see that your advertisement is quite aggressive.

German Gref: Our terminals offer the options of using QR codes, face pay and payment cards, which is very convenient. Therefore, it can be said without a doubt that Russia is the only country in the world using all these payment methods.

The dominant method of payment is QR codes in China, and cards and NFC mobile payments in Europe and the United States. Russia has both these technologies, plus the facial recognition method. No other country has this so far. This is technological independence. We do not depend on anyone now.

Additionally, we have opened public access to our new fundamental AI model, GigaChat, on April 1. It is one of the top five technologies in the world in all respects. We are slightly behind in some areas and significantly ahead in others, but overall, we are on a par in this matter. This model is now available to all private individuals and legal entities.

The AI race is not slackening. New models are created every month or two. We are pleased that we can provide our own models, which are quite competitive, and that many of our customers, both legal entities and private individuals, have started using them.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Gref, you and the team you have put together have consistently identified the key emerging trends, the most significant, cross-cutting ones, and done so at the right time. You promptly take them on and invest the necessary resources in their development. That is why at this challenging time – we will not go into the causes of all the problems we have faced in the past years – we have not only managed to keep up with our rivals, including with Sberbank’s assistance, even when it was not within your area of responsibility, but also moved forward, sometimes faster than our rivals did. I am sincerely grateful to you for that.

The speed of Sberbank’s development is a guarantee of stability and safety of our financing and banking system. This is extremely important.

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