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When Sberbank was founded in 1841, the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was just 20 years old.
It is not known whether he already kept his money at the “Sparkasse” if he had not gambled it away beforehand.
All the more well-known is his definition of Russians, who according to him are all to a certain extent Orthodox Christians - whether they like it or not.
In the meantime, of course, not all of them feel they are Orthodox Christians.
Instead, today, 180 years later, one can say: Almost every one of the 146 million Russians has been or is still at Sberbank.
More than 70 percent of the population use the services of by far the largest financial institution in the country, even Eastern Europe.
It counts 99 million people as active private customers, plus 2.7 million active corporate customers.
The bank covers the country with a network of 14,200 branches and is also active in 18 countries.
And it currently employs more than 285,000 people.
Bank as an online all-rounder
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As if that weren't enough, the importance of Sberbank for Russia is growing rapidly.
In the past few years in particular, this process has accelerated.
On the one hand, this is due to the fact that the central bank, which incidentally until recently held the majority in Sberbank in a strange tradition, began to sift through the wildly grown banking market in 2013 and removed many of the initially more than 1,000 financial institutions from the market.
Against the background of a creeping nationalization of all economic sectors, this benefited the semi-state Sberbank the most.
On the other hand, this is also due to the fact that, in view of the protracted economic crisis since the annexation of Crimea and the drop in oil prices in 2014, many a financial institution really shook, which again played most into the hands of Sberbank.
Thirdly, the increase in importance of Sberbank is also due to the fact that it finally repositioned itself last year and set the course for what is probably the greatest in its long history.
From now on, Sberbank will no longer be just a bank, but a tech group with a portfolio that is difficult to imagine in the West.
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The new logo, presented a few months ago, speaks volumes.
In essence, the term “bank” has been deleted, what remains is “Sber”.
CEO Herman Gref, descendant of a Russian-German family, described the constantly expanding range of “online services for everyday life and business” as a “whole ecosystem of services”.
The spectrum ranges from food delivery from restaurants (“Delivery Club”) and shops (“SberMarket”) to telemedicine, parcel and goods transport (“SberLogistika”), taxis and car sharing through to real estate and job portals, cloud services and payment services ("SberPay") and streaming music.
Largest online market in Europe
In most cases, the "Sber", which is also called the expansive "octopus" in Russia, participates in existing services or simply takes over them in full - as in the case of music streaming.
In the case of the online pharmacy “Sber Eapteka”, she bought almost half of the shares, the second part belongs to a pharmaceutical tycoon who also produces the Sputnik V corona vaccine.
"We think Sberbank is one of the frontrunners in establishing a Russian ecosystem," wrote the UBS bank in an analysis at the end of 2020.
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For Western eyes it may seem strange that a banking colossus, especially a state one, wants to play a leading role in the promising internet economy.
Nobody in Russia is surprised, since since Vladimir Putin's takeover of power 20 years ago, the Kremlin has tried to intervene as a player instead of as an arbitrator wherever the most money is in circulation or begins to circulate.
For a long time this was particularly the case with the oil companies, almost all of whom he brought back from private hands.
And the same now seems to be the case with emerging young industries.
Because there is a lot to get there.
With more than 100 million Internet users, Russia is the largest market in Europe in terms of numbers.
According to the agency Data Insight, the market for e-commerce rose by 23 percent to 31 billion dollars in 2019, which was the same as in the significantly more populous India.
Data Insight predicts that it will grow by an average of 33.2 percent per year through 2024.
In Sberbank branches, customers use tablet computers to conduct their business
Source: picture alliance / dpa / TASS
As everywhere, the Corona crisis has brought a powerful boost to various online businesses in Russia.
Logically, the nation's oldest e-commerce company on the market, Ozone, took advantage of the increased interest among investors in emerging-market tech companies and went public on the Nasdaq in New York in December of the previous year.
The issue brought in almost a billion dollars.
The stock shot up 42 percent at the start of trading.
The Russian tech industry has produced quite a bit.
Similar to China, because of its market size and its strong tendency towards autonomy, the country built its own tech companies very early on and prevented their marginalization, let alone a takeover by the US tech giants.
The search engine Yandex, for example, was on the market earlier than Google, refused to take over and is still not only stronger than Google in Russia, but also a multi-function from e-commerce to payment services to taxi services - with Uber as a junior partner - become.
In terms of social networks, on the other hand, the now billionaire digital nomad Pawel Durow simply copied Facebook very early on and later built up a WhatsApp competitor with the instant messenger Telegram with allegedly over 400 million users, which he leads from abroad.
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And Amazon had shown interest in the now listed ozone group at the beginning of the previous year, but the conditions did not come together, as Russian major shareholder Vladimir Evtushenkow explained in an interview with WELT in the summer: "Also: If a company is developing strongly, it shouldn't be given into foreign hands. "
This is also how the state sees it, for which Sberbank is one of the most powerful vehicles.
While the Kremlin had long given her a free hand to expand her hyper-dominant role in the financial sector, his notorious skepticism towards the private sector is now giving her support to stir up promising sectors beyond the raw materials sector.
Sberbank boss Gref explains his expansion into areas outside the traditional banking business simply with the need to survive as a traditional bank in the face of falling margins.
Whatever: In any case, it is no coincidence that the “Sber” positions itself primarily as a sparring partner of the tech multinational Yandex.
To do this, they work with the Russian Internet holding Mail.ru Group.
"Made elephants dance"
The fact that Sberbank is now involved in the young and very dynamic Russian online market required the traditional institute to be cleared of the dust.
He will “make the elephant dance,” said Gref, now 57, who is considered one of the smartest and most courageous representatives of the liberal wing in the Russian establishment, after he moved from the head of the Ministry of Economic Affairs to the management of Sberbank in 2007 would have.
The appearance of the financial institution has actually changed, from a dusty company to a modern, service-oriented one.
In the past few years it has sufficiently proven that Sberbank can do business.
Even at the peak of the economic crisis after the annexation of Crimea, in 2014 and 2015, it was almost the only bank in the country to be consistently in the black.
In 2019 a record surplus of 845 billion rubles (9.4 billion euros) was achieved.
It remained highly profitable even in the corona crisis year 2020, but had to accept a decline in profits of ten percent because the provisions for loan defaults soared.
All the greater are the ambitions of the "Sber" to succeed as quickly as possible in the e-commerce and tech sector outside of the banking business.
By 2030, the new area should make up between 20 and 30 percent of the entire business of "Sber".
This would create the basis for ensuring that no Russian, whether Orthodox or not, can get past Sberbank in the future either.