On June 15, 2021, the next meeting of the International Banking Council (IBC) was held in the video conference mode on the Zoom platform. The topic of the meeting is "Small banks in the context of the development of financial services and technologies".
IBC Chairman Alexander Murychev opened the meeting. After greeting the participants, he informed everyone about the application of the Macedonian Banking Association to join the IBC. Milena Perchinkova, Executive Secretary of the Macedonian Banking Association, spoke briefly about the Association. Then the IBC members unanimously voted for the 18th member of the Board – the Macedonian Banking Association.
The main speaker on the topic of the meeting was Fabian Gergely, Executive Director of the Hungarian National Bank, General Director of the Institute of Banking in Budapest (Budapest Institute of Banking). In particular, he spoke about the Central Bank of Hungary's SME Financing Program, as an important part of the national program to restore economic growth in the post-covid period.
The discussion of the topic was attended by: Istvan Lengyel, General Secretary of the Central and Eastern European Banking Association, Elena Chaikovskaya, Adviser to the First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia, Marat Baitokov, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association of Banks of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Elena Korobkova, Executive Director of the Association "Independent Association of Banks of Ukraine", Bakhtiyar Khamidov, General Director of the Association of Banks of Uzbekistan, Konstantin Artyukh, Vice President of the Association of Banks of Russia.
The IBC members agreed that the prospects for the development of small banks in the context of the development of financial services and technologies in the IBC member countries lie in the development of their own applications with the ability to connect to the API of other banks, "embedding" their services in service chains within developing ecosystems and combined products, maximizing access to a wider market due to the absence of geographical restrictions, linking to physical branches.
At the end of the meeting, the participants decided to hold the next IBC meeting in Ukraine in early October 2021.
Oleg Berezovoy, Director General of the FBA EAC, took part in the meeting on behalf of the Financial and Business Association for Euro-Asian Cooperation.