Vladislav Kochetkov, President of FINAM Holding: “We are better able to teach than aggressively sell”

As Wikipedia politely informs us: FINAM Investment Holding JSC is the largest retail broker in Russia, as well as an investment group specializing in providing trading and investment banking services, trust management of cash and securities, investing in the Forex market.

Most often, when we have a question about finance in the digital world in “Habrahabr”, we try to ask people who have undeniable experience and expertise in this field. And Vladislav Kochetkov, president of the aforementioned financial institution, just one of these people is not a secret.
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Therefore, we decided to ask Vladislav himself without further ado about how the company, in which he occupies not the last position, orients and operates in the modern dynamic world, where over the past 2015 its turnover amounted to $ 102 billion.

Vladislav, on the website of Finam it is written that you have been working in the company since 2005. Have you related to the creation of this organization?

Not. FINAM - much older, it was founded in 1994 by Victor Remsha. He then just graduated from MGTU im Bauman. For the past 11 years I have been working at FINAM, but FINAM entered the market leaders in the early 2000s. It was made before me.

It is clear that financial activity is a special market and area of ​​application of own skills. What is the main lesson you can learn from the history of the company to its current moment of development?

Probably the main principle that FINAM follows from the very beginning is the generation of innovations. To stay in place, you need to move very quickly. And to be a leader, you need to jump over the heads of competitors, creating new products. Throughout its history, FINAM has created a lot of things that previously did not exist on the market. And therefore, the company occupies a leading position.

The simplest example is the site finam.ru . It was created in 1999. The site was created not as a business card of brokers, but as an information site where all market participants could leave their comments. That is, we let there even competitors. As a result, we have accumulated a large amount of analytics, we were able to cover almost the entire market and repeatedly expanded our audience.

Finam.ru is a leader in its segment. And for FINAM as a broker, a bank, a management company, the site is the main generator of the client base. As a rule, the client first comes to the site for some information (currency quotes, stock quotes, comments), lives on it for a long time. From the moment of arrival at the resource to opening an account, according to our statistics, it takes 8 months. That is, he is interested, informed and gradually becomes a client.

We do not even have an active sales system on which many of our colleagues in the market live. We rather sell passive with gradual involvement. We give the opportunity to be interested, and then the person himself comes to us. Moreover, all attempts to create active sales departments by analogy with competitors did not lead to anything. We are better able to teach than to sell aggressively.

Training is the second innovation of FINAM. Now any brokerage company in Russia has a training center. The first training center appeared at FINAM. It appeared as a reaction to customer requests. A long time ago, most of the brokers in Moscow had offices on Myasnitskaya, in the building of the Central Post Office, where the Russian Stock Exchange was located. There was a big hall. In this room were traders. When they were trading, clients often approached and simply watched what the trader was doing behind his monitor: asked to explain why this button, why another button ...

At first there was one computer for which the client could sit down. A consultant approached him and explained how to work. Then two computers appeared. Now through our training center passes about 150 thousand people per year, and this figure is growing. That is, we teach more than any financial university. Following us, other companies came to study centers with a delay of 2 to 5 years.

We were the first in Russia to introduce the social trading service comon.ru . Any user who has a brokerage account can go to the site, look at the deals and strategies of other traders and connect to them so that the deals are repeated automatically. This innovation is not even Russian, but global. Our direct competitor - the American site covestor.com - appeared about the same time.

And ideas arose independently of each other. Now social trading is already mainstream in the brokerage business.

We were the first in Russia to introduce the service of a personal financial consultant. If before a person had to either give money to the management, or do everything on their own, then the personal assistant can simply prompt, advise.
We were the first to launch a remote account opening, beating the competition by almost 8 months. Now we have remotely open about 35% of accounts. We are the first to launch an online stock store and so on.

Can you name the main mistake and the most difficult task?

To be a leader, you need not to be in the market, but to create a market. Otherwise, you will be a strong middling at best, and an outsider at worst.

The main mistake is the same for everyone: to continue unsuccessful projects. When you did something, you invested a lot of energy, but the project didn’t fire, and you continue to invest more energy and resources in it, it decomposes and demotivates the business. It not only eats up profits. People who see that their colleagues have been sitting for years on a useless project that nobody wants, which they’re sorry to close, are also being demotivated. Therefore, here it is necessary to cut without hesitation, without waiting for it to become an ulcer on the body of the business. Healthy cruelty is very helpful.



What advice can you give to beginners, people walking the same path? If a person wants to develop a career in finance, for example?

If you want, you have to go and do it. Finance is an area in which you can quickly make an impressive career. I have a colleague who came to the company by courier, and now has become the head of a large department. He deliberately chose the financial sphere, although he did not have a completed education and studied in the second year.

But, while still a student, he got involved in a financial company, communicated with people, and understood the mechanisms of their work. This was an excellent base for further growth.

Therefore, do not be afraid, sit, think, wait: "Here I’ll finish the university and go to work." Even if you are a freshman, try to get a job. It is better to start and master practical knowledge right away than to find out that you are an unnecessary business theorist. Because most of the people who come to us after universities, have to retrain: spend at least six months so that the employee understands how real business differs from the theory that he was told at the department of securities.

You are also engaged in direct investments in online projects. What is the main criterion for startups who would like to attract investments from FINAM?

Now we are focusing on two directions. There is a fund FinSight Ventures , which invests in fintech projects. We are interested in the so-called "killer banks", peer to peer lending, speeding up and simplifying transactions. For example, from Russian companies in our portfolio Platiza.ru, a microfinance organization that provides loans through the Internet. From Western companies - Lending Club, this is peer to peer loans. Earnest - financing student loans. In general, everything that allows you to make the financial sector cheaper, more convenient, faster, we are interested.

The second area is the FINAM Global fund, where our old, well-functioning investments in the companies Mamba, Badoo, E-generator are currently located. That is, here we are interested in both large traffic generators and classroom content projects, with which we can help monetize traffic. We are also interested in advertising on the Internet.

Therefore, the criteria are as follows: getting into the industry segmentation, the team and the audience of the project.

I understand correctly that today you can be called an international company, and not just a Russian one?

Yes, FINAM is a global company. Our units operate not only in Russia (where we have covered 86 cities), but also in Europe, India, China, the United States and Mexico. In these countries we have a physical presence. In general, we serve customers from more than 40 countries. Therefore, FINAM is both a global financial company and a venture fund too. Our portfolios include companies from India, Vietnam, China, Russia, Ukraine, USA, France and other countries.

What is the next FINAM product you have high hopes for?

It sounds a bit trite ... but we have an idea to launch the marketplace on the site finam.ru. He will sell not only financial services, but also a wider range of products - travel and much more. These are additional opportunities for our clients and additional opportunities for monetizing the audience. The audience of the site finam.ru is 10 times more than the client base of FINAM, and we want to give them more than just information.