This week, the Fintech India Innovation Awards were presented as part of India EXPO 2025. Russian Alfa-Bank was nominated in two categories at a time: Best FinTech Leader and Best Use of AI in FinTech.
Our editorial team decided to find out how Russian banks are using artificial intelligence, being India’s fourth most important partner in the field of foreign economic activity, and how this is transforming interactions with clients.
In autumn 2023, Russia and India published a White Paper related to AI conformity assessment. The White Paper on Artificial Intelligence Technology Conformity Assessment was published within the framework of the Memorandum of the Russian (Technical Committee for Standardization ‘Artificial Intelligence’ No. 164; RUSSOFT) and Indian (CIRTC) parties.
The White Paper reflects the coordinated by the two countries goals and objectives of AI technology conformity assessment, existing AI solutions in pilot industries on the Russian and Indian markets, the state of international and national standardization documents applicable to pilot industries, and approaches to the ethical regulation of AI agreed upon by the two countries.
The pilot projects selected are the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare and agriculture, while we will study how the financial sector works with AI in Russia. We have found out that Russian banks are actively using artificial intelligence to serve customers and improve business processes.
The above-mentioned Alfa-Bank was the first in Russia to implement the “thinking” AI model DeepSeek R1 in a matter of hours. This powerful neural network surpasses ChatGPT and Gemini in its capabilities. The model shook up the American stock market just with its release.
The bank confirmed that it uses generative AI in order to improve its digital products’ quality, security and speed to market, and the integration of the new “reasoning” LLM will allow it to implement advanced solutions for customers even more efficiently. LLMs speed up data processing, enhance analytics, allow for better personalization of services, and create next-generation AI assistants.
We asked Alfa-Bank about other AI innovations that are supporting the banking sector in Russia. Alfa-Bank CEO Vladimir Verkhoshinskiy said that “the bank’s engineers have created a unique generative AI platform — AlfaGen. This platform makes it possible to connect any cloud LLM, such as GigaChat or YaGPT, to banking processes, as well as quickly integrate neural networks into the bank’s closed infrastructure.”
“All interactions with cloud and on-premise neural networks go through a special security module, reliably protecting customer data. Based on AlfaGen, a line of AI assistants for bank employees has been developed, which helps speed up development by 30%,” added the Russian bank’s CEO.
In addition, Alfa-Bank engineers were the first in Russia to implement a revolutionary solution for IT development — virtual employees based on artificial intelligence. The uniqueness of the solution is that it is not just a “smart assistant” — AI agents independently from humans develop a complete plan for solving a problem, create a program code and check the result. These digital assistants, united in teams, can independently create automatic tests for Java programs — just like real developers do, but many times faster.
Russia’s largest state-owned bank, Sber, is also developing AI in Russia and has launched its own neural network model, GigaChat. It is called a competitor to ChatGPT. CEO and Chairman of the Management Board of Sber German Gref has noted in his addresses that “GigaChat can be used not only by mass users who like to experiment with innovations, but also by students and even researchers for serious scientific work”.
Not only financial institutions, but also government agencies provide support for artificial intelligence in the Russian financial sector. Head of the Central Bank of Russia (the Russian regulator) Elvira Nabiullina admits that AI is just a base: “In my opinion, one thing is clear – artificial intelligence is becoming a basic technology. A basic technology that is used in a wide range of industries, and it can be roughly compared with a steam engine, with electricity, with computers – what had formed the basis of the technological revolution”.
Judging by how quickly AI is developing in the financial sector in Russia and India, it is another driver of globalization and the development of global innovations.
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