The new OTP banka Srbija has started its operation in Serbia
‘OTP banka Srbija a.d. Novi Sad’ has become a leading bank in the country after successfully completing the most complicated merger ever taking place in the local market. The project was further aggravated by the special circumstances deriving from the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing Project Management and Data Migration Services, MINDSPIRE Consulting played a major role in this successful merger with its expert teams.
On the 24th of September 2019, as a result of a successful financial closing, OTP Bank Plc. became 100% owner of the Société Générale Banka Srbija and its subsidiaries. Integration Project “Sirius” (brightest star) was launched right after the successful completion of the previous “Rising Star” Integration Project in May. With the widespread professional experience collected on several former integration projects, MINDSPIRE supported OTP Group throughout the whole process, providing Project Management and Data Migration services.
The integration process was completed on April 30th, 2021, with the commitment of almost 650 project members, among them the employees of the Serbian banks, OTP Headquarters and several external advisors and vendors. They made the success possible through their dedication, professionalism, and expertise over the burdensome 19 months of the integration project, whereby Vojvodjanska banka a.d. Novi Sad and OTP banka Srbija a.d. Beograd was merged and now continues its business operations as one bank under the name of OTP banka Srbija a.d. Novi Sad. This successful integration resulted in the establishment of one of the leading financial institutions in Serbia in terms of assets, number of branches and the size of the loan and deposit portfolio (first in the country by market share of loans, and the second largest banking in terms of assets), as well as a leader in innovations and customer experience.
On the 5th of May 2021, after the completed merger, OTP banka Srbija opened its merged branch network, with a total of 213 branches across the country. OTP banka Srbija has become an institution that provides additional benefits and new opportunities to its customers, partners, and the society in which it operates.
Besides the extreme complexity of this integration, the project also had to deal with the extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during almost the whole integration. Combating the coronavirus and adjusting the operation to the epidemiological condition represented an additional layer of difficulties for the project participants. By facing the situation, the project demonstrated that through solidarity, strong teamwork, and agility they can overcome adverse circumstances and transform challenges into opportunities. The colleagues had to continue their demanding work remotely from home-office, staying focused and committed to the professional performance, ensuring the delivery of the project within the originally planned timeframe.
Additionally, three Loan Moratoriums were introduced in Serbia with different regulations, thus with different requirements regarding migration and implying additional business as usual work.
The project was coordinated by the Project Management Office, with 24 PMO members (consisting of the local PMO Team’s members, delegated HQ colleagues, and the Serbian and Hungarian MINDSPIRE consultants). They supported the nearly 650 project members across 30 Working Groups and 10 Cross-Functional teams, through adequate coordination, transparent and timely communication, enabling the effective and productive project operation.
MINDSPIRE Consulting provided guidance and support in the project methodology, facilitated collaboration based on the internally developed knowledge transfer and experiences of previous integration projects. The tasks performed included project planning and follow-up, coordination, administration, communication and reporting, alongside the change management and change control, covering all project phases.
The data migration services covered all relevant dataset related activities, from conceptual and logical design, through the implementation of the physical migration, until the testing and finally the live migration process execution. The newest version of DELTA, MINDSPIRE’s own data migration tool was used for design and implementation of the migration process itself, benefiting also from its built-in monitoring and reporting functionalities, which were tailored for the actual project. Not only the tools and the standard methodology, but also the experienced project manager, and the competent team of migration business- and technical experts helped delivering this part of the project and provided effective support for this critical activity. Due to the COVID-19 situation the migration team faced unexpected challenges in the implementation phase. They successfully managed both the difficulties of remote work and the complexity of implementing the three Loan Moratoriums in the migration process. This required to set up specific transformation rules and exception handling for the impacted data. This was our first data migration project where the implementation phase was performed fully remotely, based on the team previous experience.
In this success story, MINDSPIRE played a major role with its flexible approach and professional support in two areas. Firstly, by delegating 13 strong personnel and methodology guidance with tools for the Project Management Office. Secondly, supporting Data Migration of IT systems and offering not only the technical platform, but an additional 15 experts dedicated to migration.
It’s not the first time when OTP Group has significantly increased its market share in Europe with a successful acquisition and bank merger. It’s an honor for us to contribute to this successful international growth by being a partner of OTP Bank.
References:
https://www.otpbank.hu/portal/en/GSS/Serbia
https://www.otpbanka.rs/en/about-us/
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