How does the bank address stakeholder interests?

Feedback makes up the basis for creating efficient relations between the bank and its stakeholders. We have set up various feedback channels: polls, complaint and proposal analysis, mass media review, hot line with the bank’s president, etc. (see the Table below). They allow us to better understand our stakeholders’ needs and expectations to be able to make timely changes to the bank’s development strategy. Evaluating the bank perception, analyzing problematic issues, reviewing improvement proposals received through feedback channels make up a part of the governance process, and are continuously used by the bank’s management to make decisions.

PRINCIPAL FEEDBACK TOOLS

In 2012 the bank set up a new feedback channel based on crowdsourcing technology that allows to involve an unlimited number of participants (clients, employees, experts, etc) in developing critical solutions. The crowdsourcing technology was first tested in 2011 within the Sberbank-21 project.

In August 2012, Sberbank launched the first in Russia crowdsourcing platform http://sberbank21.ru that was used to develop such projects as No Queues!, Non-credit Corporate Products, Public Discussion of Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2011, Retail Office: Comfort and Quality Service. Over 20,000 people participated in developing first projects.

“Sberbank is the first Russian corporation that builds its operations on the basis of involving large numbers of people, all corporate employees in the process of creating daily values. Today, we create the environment where all employees generate ideas while key managers support the best of them, and turn them into standards of operation. In other words, we are building a corporation of the 21stcentury whose success depends on how deep people are involved in creating value and how fast the best innovations are implemented.” — Herman Gref

Public discussion of the CSR Report was rather important for us. It allowed to obtain feedback from our clients, employees, experts and simply socially minded people. Sberbank was the first among major corporations that managed to involve such a large public in discussing its corporate social responsibility. This unique project — even in terms of international practice — proved rather successful.

Now, bank managers and heads of divisions can use the project results in their work. The project was also presented to the Committee for Interaction with Individual Minority Shareholders and received apositive feedback. The outcome of the crowdsourcing project and recommendations of the Committee for Interaction with Individual Minority Shareholders are included in this Report and will be taken into account in developing the bank’s CSR strategy.

Sberbank’s experiment proved high efficiency of the new approach to handling creative ideas. Crowdsourcing was chosen as a principal management approach, and we plan to use it actively in preparing critical corporate decisions, developing new products/services, optimizing our processes.

Public discussion of the bank’s corporate social responsibility report

The project was based on the crowdsourcing format and took place from August 24 to October 24, 2012. A total of 5,368 users registered for the project, 2,447 took part in the discussion. 1,792 proposals were submitted, 35,244 comments were made. The discussion involved our clients, employees, representatives of public organizations, educational institutions, etc.

The project’s main objectives were:

• to evaluate Sberbank’s CSR Report 2011 including completeness and materiality of disclosures;
• to identify prospective lines for CSR development;
• to prepare guidelines for CSR Report 2012.

Principal results:

• key stakeholder groups massively involved in discussing the report;
• a social network for future discussions created;
• quantitative valuation of the report based on formalized criteria obtained;
• proposals to improve the CSR Report as a document prepared;
• clients and Employees groups’ priorities in CSR trends and initiatives identified;
• a bank of initial proposals regarding CSR development and specific initiatives created;
• the project enjoyed great popularity in professional and public communities.

KEY CSR ISSUES IDENTIFIED BY PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

Development of the crowdsourcing technology is a logical product of the bank’s effort to involve employees in developing and implementing innovative solutions. In 2012 our in-house technological platform known as Ideas Exchange was used to file over 43,000 proposals: nearly 7,000 of them were implemented, and total implementation effect in 2009–2012 reached nearly 11 bln RUB. Now we are confident that involving employees in the daily improvement process became an important factor in raising operations efficiency.

The bank’s achievements in innovation activity and crowdsourcing development were marked by professional community. In 2012 Sberbank was awarded prestigious international prize The Best Innovator from ATKearney, and a special award from the CEO magazine For Successful Implementation of the Crowdsourcing Idea.

THE MAIN ISSUES DISCUSSED IN 2012 (BASED ON THE ANALYSIS OF MEDIA COVERAGE)

Tools:

• Abbreviations
• Glossary

• Contacts
• Corporate website