Sberbank of Russia : Sber and Centrsoyuz present Cooperative Online, the first digital service for cooperative organizations

At the online conference Cooperation: A New Opportunity for Small Business Development, Sber presented a new digital product called Cooperative Online, which will make the work of cooperative organizations simpler and easier, digitize many processes, and unlock new prospects for entrepreneurs and businessmen seeking transformation and development of cooperation.

In the realities of 2020, the complexity and inconvenience of doing business offline the way cooperative organizations do have become extremely noticeable. For instance, cooperative organizations are obliged to keep a register of shareholders and reflect all operations in it. Very often, they use a ledger for this, and shareholders need to hold in-person meetings to make a decision, keep paper minutes. To become a new shareholder, you need to be there in person and submit an application on paper.

With Cooperative Online you can digitize an organization and conduct all its operations online: keep an electronic shareholder list, a shareholder can interact with the cooperative organization in one's member area, and the latter is also the place where a company can collect a set of documents to register a cooperative organization.

Notifications, electronic filings, remote payment of fees, and much more will make cooperative operations modern and attractive to many stakeholders.

Cooperation remains one of the drivers behind Russian entrepreneurship, which currently has about 10 million people engaged in it. Of course, it is vital that the general trend towards digitization, which we see in business today, would also involve cooperation. Indeed, its further evolution is impossible without modern and convenient technology. We are interested in making cooperation in this country one of the most relevant tools for business development, therefore we were happy to accept the offer of Centrosoyuz to participate in the digitization of cooperation in Russia.

Anatoly Popov

Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Head of Corporate Investment Business, Sberbank

We are convinced that the cooperative model is convenient for SMEs when they need to pool resources to resolve business issues. The offline world, where cooperative organizations have existed until today, has become the main obstacle thwarting the development of cooperation. Cooperative Online lets you see all managerial processes inside a cooperative organization, making them transparent for shareholders and top executives, simplifying them, and letting you inform stakeholders and make decisions remotely, which is especially important during the pandemic. We are confident that this online solution will attract young entrepreneurs to cooperate. Having its digital and product expertise, Sber has become our reliable partner in this project.

Council Chairman, Central Union of Consumer Societies of the Russian Federation