Moscow, Russia — August 27, 2021.
Tinkoff is one of only 13 profitable digital banks globally, and the only profitable one in Russia, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG). There are a total of 249 digital banks operating around the world and 236 of those are loss making, BCG has found.

BCG has analyzed the performance indicators of digital only banks and discovered that only 13 of them are currently profitable, representing approximately 5% of all digital banks, of which 10 are located in the Asia Pacific Region and three in Europe.

There are three main factors that impact a bank’s success: its use of existing assets, its ability to build and scale the bank, and its ability to maintain sustainable progress over time, according to the authors of this research. The latter is exceptionally important in the face of growing competition with regular banks, which have also started investing in customer experience and ecosystems development.

In order to create and scale a digital bank successfully in the long term, the research team suggests focusing on the following three pillars of success: customer obsession, scalable and flexible technology and agile organization and management.

Max Hauser, Partner and Managing Director at BCG and the developer of BCG’s board of experts on digital technology in Russia and the CIS:

«When it comes to these leaders, including Russia’s Tinkoff, we can see that they fulfil all of these conditions. Not only is Tinkoff among the world’s 13 profitable digital banks, but it is also a leader in terms of coverage: their services reach more than 9% of the country’s population. However, we must acknowledge that digital players are still at the start of their journey, and that none of them are yet to hold a market share greater than 2% in terms of total value of deposits and loan portfolios within their markets.»

BCG is an international company operating in management consulting and is part of the so-called «big three» management consulting firms. The company was founded in 1963 and has a global network of more than 90 offices in 50 countries.