Constantin Mares, OTP Bank: “97 percent of our HQ colleagues have the possibility to work from home”

“Each crisis comes with some opportunities. We’ve gained some things that we don’t want to lose. One of these things is the mobility of our colleagues. 97 percent of our HQ colleagues have the possibility to work from home and they can do their job regularly” Constantin Mares, Executive Director in charge with IT, PMO & Transformation Office, OTP Bank said during the Digital Transformation Conference – Fintech & Banking.

“Another important finding of the crisis was the wellbeing of our people and how preoccupied was the management to take measures to protect our colleagues to make sure that they cope with the psychological impact that this crisis brought. We hired some professional psychologists to help our colleagues and such measures were appreciated by our people.

We also had to cope with the behavioural changes of the customers in this period. There was a much more focus on the digital payments, digital channels and we had to be there for our clients.

Regarding competition with fintechs, we believe our strengths is to offer banking services, focusing on customer experience. We have a partnership with FintechOS to rely on their strengths and we have built together a very modern process in which we allow clients to access services completely online. It was a successful partnership and it worked out pretty well for us.

There will be more banks adopting new technologies. Cloud computing is an example. Regulators are more open to this. This adoption of cloud computing will be beneficial for the banks. Another important thing that will differentiate the winners from the losers in the banking industry is how we use the artificial intelligence. This will be a game changing element for the future.”

The event benefitted from the support of DIAMOND PARTNER Wipro Limited, GOLD PARTNERS ACCA, Inform Lykos, OTP Bank, STRATEGIC PARTNERS ARB (Romanian Association of Banks), CIO Council, ARIR (Romanian Investor Relations Association),  PARTNERS Arval, Sea One, Wave, WITH THE SUPPORT of ANIS, Cluj IT, FabLab Iasi, and MEDIA PARTNERS Outsourcing Today, Financial Intelligence, Economistul, Romania Durabila, Club Economic and Pin Magazine.