George Piskov tells about Unibank and Unistream future

10/16/2015

“Unistream is developing very dynamically despite the harsh conditions: we all know what is happening in the market of migrants and money transactions. But we have a strong team and a network of partners that includes 460 banks in more than a hundred countries,” George Piskov said this in his interview to Bankir.ru portal.

Banks.am, 16 October 2015

George Piskov and Gagik Zakaryan intend to develop Unistream as a universal payment platform for individuals and legal entities.

George Piskov said this in his interview to Bankir.ru portal.

“Unistream is developing very dynamically despite the harsh conditions: we all know what is happening in the market of migrants and money transactions. But we have a strong team and a network of partners that includes 460 banks in more than a hundred countries,” he said.

George Piskov called Unibank’s retail portfolio “high quality”.

“Three years ago, we decided to aggressively enter the retail lending business in Armenia. Together with our other company, Protobase Laboratories LTD, we fully realized the project on engineering of business processes in the retail lending in Armenia. And then the bank's employees suddenly saw that they can handle 3000 loan applications a day. For an Armenian bank it is a large scale. Today, Unibank is the first in terms of POS-loans and cash loans, it’s the third by the volume of consumer loans and the fifth by the volume of term deposits issued to individuals”, said the co-owner of the bank.

“Gagik and I are in the Board of Directors (Unibank- edit.) and we take an active part in the development strategy and decision-making on what tools to use to resolve a problem. The management team is very powerful and trustworthy; they are highly disciplined and have a very strong sense of duty. The success of Unibank is mostly the management’s merit which takes the tasks and performs them”, George Piskov said.

Speaking about the upcoming IPO of the bank in Armenia, George Piskov said that “this would be kind of a national IPO”.

“This is a part of our long- term strategy with individuals. We want our bank consumers to use our services and eventually become our co-owners”, he said.

According to Piskov, “a very little part” of the stocks will be placed during the IPO.

“However, this is one of the first banking IPOs in Armenia and this is a very important step for us so as to reflect our customers’ opinions in the bank's strategy”, he said.