Lev Frenkel Biography

Lev Frenkel, R-Style SoftLab: on the history of the company, you can study the automation of the financial sector History of R-Style SoftLab-this is, in fact, the history of the country's financial sector. In its quarter -century biography, as in the mirror, all the stages of development of the industry along the path of informatization were reflected.

About how the company itself has changed during these 25 years and how it changed the appearance of classical banking structures, giving them the features of the Fintech, Tadviser was told by Lev Frenkel, General Director of R-Style SoftLab, Lev Frenkel Banking sector, from the point of view of IT products, is the most breakthrough and mature company R-STYLE SoftLab.

He counts from G. literally two years after that the project began to create an automated banking system of ABS in Sberbank. Is it really a time of amazing opportunities for beginner companies? Lev Frenkel: I’ll clarify: in the city, as for Sberbank, in X territorial banks as part of this structure had the opportunity to independently choose software for themselves. Due to its openness and reliability, our ABS at that time was one of the most popular in the market, and many terbans connected their fate with it.

Further, the situation began to change: new players appeared, banks developed their own ABS. In particular, Sberbank began to create his ABS and formed his own company for this purpose. Our presence there for objective reasons gradually decreased. But the experience gained in those days in Sberbank allowed us to take into account with confidence in the success of projects of any level of complexity and not only in Russia.

We went beyond the boundaries of Russia and introduced our system in almost all CIS countries and even in Mongolia. In recent years, the number of Russian banks began to decline sharply. Does it matter to the company's business? Lev Frenkel: Of course, it matters. It is sad when our clients, especially those with whom we have passed together, cease to exist. And from the point of view of business, 15 years ago, the bulk of the projects with us was concentrated in the SMB sector.

Today, the number of players in this segment has decreased significantly. We have long noticed this trend and reoriented our business, both in market segments and in terms of project sizes. Of course, we continue to actively work with an SMB sector, support all our customers, but the main development trend of the company has long been associated with the top segment.

It is these banks that are “mod lawmakers”, the technological leaders of the industry, so the company's development vector is determined in cooperation with them. And for a long time, the company has been engaged not only and not so much the replication of software as complex large implementation projects. What do you think online can compensate for this loss of classic banks?

Lev Frenkel: The development of banks goes in this direction. However, there are not so many online banks, although there are bright examples. And in the regions, the majority still make up mainly local banks, plus there are branches of large banks. At the moment, our client base is - these are medium and regional universal banks, that is, those that need maximum functionality in order to compete with the largest banks - those that have the opportunity to maintain their own companies engaged in the development of banking software.

VTB has achieved independence for AI developers at the bank from foreign technologies 5. Ens-a-way entering the insurance market last year is an example of learning new market segments? Lev Frenkel: Yes, of course. The fact is that many financial organizations, almost every large bank, have an insurance company in the structure of the banking group. The service of customers of insurance companies resembles in essence the service of bank customers.

Moreover, it is often concentrated in maternal banks. It is logical that thanks to the successful experience of our interaction with banks, insurance companies have long been considering our company as a potential IT partner. As well as banks, they need a frontal solution in order to draw up insurance products. They also need IT solutions for distance channels of interaction with customers and online sales.

They want to provide their customers with the best service, do it faster, better than others, and understand that with good front -office systems and DBO systems they will gain a competitive advantage in the struggle for the loyalty of each client and, as a result, their number. The banking sector, from the point of view of IT products, is today the most breakthrough and mature.

Therefore, we had a great desire to share with insurance companies the experience of the implementation of banking systems and distance decisions that we have accumulated in cooperation with financial institutions. In our opinion, to date, some insurance companies are somewhat outdated, and many do not have systems for remote customer service at all.Therefore, we consider this market as very promising.

In addition to frontal decisions, we offer other products for the insurance market, for example, reporting in the XBRL format, connectors to state information systems - recently, customers are increasingly interested in similar solutions. Not so long ago, an Asseco international financial group appeared among the company's shareholders. Tell us more about it. Lev Frenkel: An independent swimming, which the company went to the city of R-Style SoftLab, entered the Asseco international group of companies.

As a result, R-Style SoftLab gained access to advanced European technologies that we can broadcast to the Russian market. Moreover, the company's position turned out to be unique. On the one hand, we remained a Russian company, all our software products are included in the register of domestic software. So absolutely all banks and companies can use them in their work. On the other hand, international experience, tested European technologies and IT solutions became available to us, we got the opportunity to replenish our line of partners' products, as well as bring new ideas and technologies to our market.

In different years, certain technological ideas and approaches became a kind of “time symbols”. Which of them, in your opinion, became key milestones in the history of banking informatization? Lev Frenkel: In the middle of X, when it all began, such a symbol was the "Operational Bank Day". A little later, DBU appeared on the market - products for remote banking services, which still continue to develop, modify.

Further, the banks themselves grew and increased, the volume of data with which banks work, as well as the requirements of the regulator - all this led to an increase in interest in data storage. Another milestone is a boom in retail lending. He presented popularity in X various conveyors, frontal and other decisions related to retail. As the electronic government has developed, there is a great demand for integration with state information systems.

And today, of course, the time of artificial intelligence, large data, microservice architectures of IT in the financial sector are developing very violently. And our company has always been in the search for fresh ideas to meet the needs of the market, so all the symbols mentioned above appeared in our line of products in a timely manner. In one of your interviews, you expressed the idea that "the Russian applied software is not inferior to Western counterparts, and often surpasses them." Can you give examples of superiority?

Lev Frenkel: Western players, with all due respect to their experience and functional filling of their products, unfortunately, do not know the specifics of the Russian market, especially in terms of reporting, accounting requirements, etc. Consider, for example, data storage. Western storage facilities have a common problem: there is no data model adapted for Russian specifics, and this is one of the key factors in the success of the implementation project.

The development of such a model for Western vendors is complex, since they do not have a deep understanding of the specifics of Russian accounting. In addition, in the West they are used to the fact that the legislation is changing with a certain regularity, say, twice a year. And in Russia everything is different. The legislation can change once every few days, and until the last day it is not known whether it will enter into force.

Therefore, our developers who supply their software to the Russian market require maximum flexibility and speed of the implementation of new requirements. This is what Western decisions and companies cannot provide. The Russian developer is always a good and reliable partner for Russian banks, always takes into account their needs, sells their wishes in his products and, most importantly, is ready to help, including at the customer’s site.

If we talk about high technology, is there a lot of IT systems in the West, which are presented with such requirements in terms of volume, processing speed, complexity of tasks that, for example, Sberbank to its DBU systems? It implies work in all time zones, 24x7 and about 70 million active customers. There are few such solutions around the world. And one of them is our Sberbank Online solution, it stands out noticeably even among the best Western analogues.

But an interesting phenomenon of literally in recent years is young aggressive startups with which large banks are constantly attracted. Every now and then we will learn that someone spent the next Hakaton and chose several novice “green” developers to work on their projects. How do large banks build relationships with these newcomers, on the one hand, and serious players of the level of the R-Style SoftLab level, on the other?

Lev Frenkel: In my opinion, it looks as follows. Fintehs and startups act as some revolutionaries, inventors: they declare new ideas, new approaches. And then large financial organizations or large vendors implement them at a higher qualitative level. On a practical level, this usually implies the purchase of a startup and the inclusion of its developers in their team. Therefore, we do not feel competition from the "green" teams.

Sometimes they appear in tenders and projects, but the main competition is made to us by other large vendors, as well as their own IT teams of banks. We observe the processes of fusing banks and business IT: they continue, IT commands of banks are growing.

But only time will tell if the rebirth of banks in the IT company will become total. Competition from the Insource developers, that is, the internal teams of IT developers of banks are felt? Lev Frenkel: Indeed, banks are seriously thinking: hire a vendor with rich experience or platform or to develop completely from scratch with their team. We feel such a trend.

Why do banks switch to their own development? First of all, they want to get the handling of processes. Own team is a fully controlled team, unlike independent vendor. In addition, quite often their own development leads to minimizing costs, as well as to increase the speed of the output of products to the market. These are the three main reasons why large banks focus on Insource development.