“Being a leader means creating trends” – how to build a new banking model

Kamelia Mineva is Executive Director and Member of the Management Board of ProCredit Bank Bulgaria since December 2019. She became part of the Bank's team in 2010, starting as Regional Expert "Lending" and then as Branch Manager and Head of Business Line "Large Enterprises". She was also part of the Credit Risk team at ProCredit Holding, Germany.

She graduated from the London School of Economics with a degree in Economics and holds an Executive MBA from the University of Sheffield. In 2017, she also graduated from the ProCredit Academy in Fürth, Germany.

As part of ProCredit Bank's strategic management, Kamelia Mineva is responsible for business development with individual clients and small and medium-sized companies.

Ms. Mineva, let's start there, why do you define yourself as "One Other Bank" at ProCredit Bank?

We are One Other Bank mainly because of the different way we work. We want banking to be easy, accessible, understandable for customers. And when I say customers, I mean both individuals and small and medium-sized businesses in Bulgaria, which are our focus.

We are different because we are close to the businesses we work with – the small and medium-sized enterprises. We spend a lot more time with our business customers – in the manufacturing companies, in their warehouses, offices - than we do in our own branches.

We're even different in the way we dress – business attire, but with sneakers so it's a little easier to get to our customers. Anyone can see the difference even by walking into our offices – they are colourful, interesting, transparent.

So this is your vision for the market in general - to be more accessible, easier?

Absolutely! More understandable, closer to customers. Because the banking sector has to move towards new services, not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of customer needs. And how can we understand the customer's needs, what is making it difficult for them, what their objectives are, if we are not close to them and do not speak the same language?

There's always an interesting story behind such drastic changes, like "One other bank". Do you remember how the idea for this campaign was born?

I remember very well. I'm glad our colleagues in the marketing department are willing to do bold things and implement new ideas. But we haven't become "another bank" from last year or the year before. We have been like this as a way of working since we entered the Bulgarian market more than 20 years ago.

The idea of the "One Other Bank" campaign was to show ourselves as we really are. Not through famous faces appearing on commercials, not through clichés we see in bank advertisements. We wanted to get away from that.

So we took the bold decision to do "one other marketing campaign" where we put our real faces out there, even the faces of the Bank's Board of Directors, and show who we are in our everyday lives.

And how do you imagine the banking sector in Bulgaria in 10 years. What big changes do you see?

The banking sector is certainly changing. Very often, when I read experts' opinions about what is coming in the sector, they talk about more regulation and digitalisation.

It is normal for the banking sector to be highly regulated because it needs to be secure for customers. But, on the other hand, regulations make digitisation more difficult because they burden processes with more bureaucracy. In my opinion, more attention should be paid to simplifying processes.

If we look at the surveys, in Europe more than 50% of people under 40 prefer not to work with traditional banks but with fintech companies. That is to say, they want access to an easier, faster, more innovative process, because fintech companies are still not regulated as much as banks.

And the other thing that clients certainly want is lower fees. This is something that the banking sector will have to think about and will have to work on.

The transformation is sometimes largely driven by generational change...

It is, and the generations are very different and, I think, they are becoming even more different because the pace of digitisation is accelerating every year. Young people who are now up to 20 - 25 years old are used to doing absolutely everything through their phone and with one click.

In our bank, an individual can do absolutely everything digitally – through that to identify themselves, to open an account - it only takes about 7 minutes, including getting a loan absolutely digitally.

But there are still not a few steps to go through. There's a lot to improve in the way of simplification.

You said that banks should think about these things in the future. Do you think they are already doing that?

They have started to do it. I definitely see it as a direction over the last 5 years. Certainly COVID has also helped that to happen more intensively. But we don't see working models of fully digitised processes in Bulgaria yet. Bank branches and physical presence has hardly decreased in the last 5 years.

Digital channels are offered more as an alternative, but we still don't see absolutely successful, fully digital or at least banks with a really small number of offices in our market. And that's something we're already seeing in Europe, and judging by the customer satisfaction and the surveys I'm seeing there, those banks are winning a lot more customers right now.

What is ProCredit Bank a leader in?

It matters a lot to me what a leader means. Leader is not measured in what our position is, asset size or biggest profit. It's the concept of leadership that's from a few years ago. These days a leader is more one who is flexible, one who can make changes, one who creates trends. And in that respect, I think we are absolutely a leader in our work with small and medium-sized businesses in Bulgaria.

Our specialization, our expertise makes us a leader in this sector.

In my opinion, being a leader also means being able to motivate the people around you so that they trust you, follow you and are satisfied. And that is what comes out as a result when we do our customer satisfaction surveys. Certainly the results are some of the highest in the market and that's the thing that actually makes us a leader.

That seems to be your cause.

Yes! And last but not least, digitalization, which for us started more than 10 years ago. There's nothing an individual can't do with us digitally at the moment.

Translated with DeepL.