Sven Raba becomes Bigbank’s Chairman of the Management Board
Kaido Saar, the present Chairman of the Management Board of Bigbank AS, will vacate the position he has held for a long time on 1 September, and he will be replaced by the current management board member Sven Raba.
“Kaido leaving us is sad, but understandable – 15 years is a third of a person’s working life, which is a very long time,” said Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bigbank Parvel Pruunsild. “Sven Raba has a lot of experience in the areas of finance and IT, and he has worked in banking for more than 20 years, 12 of them as a management board member. I am sure that Kaido will leave the bank in good and reliable hands. The Supervisory Board will continue looking for the right person to fill the now vacant fifth position in the bank’s management.”
“I must praise Kaido for his remarkable work in good and bad times alike,” said the future Chairman of the Management Board of Bigbank Sven Raba. “Bigbank has made a massive qualitative leap and created the preconditions it needs for sustainable growth. I would like to take the opportunity to thank our loyal customers in nine countries and excellent employees in six countries. Today’s Bigbank is a bank with great energy that looks to the future with hope.”
According to Sven Raba, the bank needs to focus on its clients in order to be successful. “Bigbank has 170,000 clients and it keeps growing,” he said. “We will concentrate our main information and banking technology solutions to a single modern platform – the migration will take place in stages from this June until year 2020. This will help us achieve efficient customer service and product development in all of the countries where we operate and create the preconditions for actively entering new markets.”
“I have seen many changes and developments in the bank’s and my own life in my 15 years at Bigbank,” said current Chairman of the Management Board of Bigbank Kaido Saar. “It’s difficult to leave, because we have such a great team at Bigbank and we’ve shared so many different experiences over the years. I would like to thank everyone at the bank. I hand over the reins with a good feeling and light heart.”
“Bigbank is in a good position – it is a strong and profitable business with a string growth potential in its present nine countries of operations as well as on new markets,” added Kaido Saar. “The bank has changed its business model and is now a digital bank with low credit interest rates, which relies on the modern information system that is being developed by the bank and already partly in use. Sven will be able to increase the bank’s scale and scope with its support.”
Bigbank AS (www.bigbank.ee) is an Estonian-owned credit institution that specialises in consumer loans and term deposits. In addition to its operations in Estonia, it has branches in Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Spain. The bank also offers its deposit products as cross-border services in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. The total number of Bigbank’s employees at the end of Q2 2017 was 431 – 212 in Estonia, 76 in Latvia, 74 in Lithuania, 24 Finland, 30 in Spain and 15 in Sweden. The loan portfolio grew by 39 million euros to 402 million euros in the first six months of this year. The assets of the group amounted to 424 million euros as at 30 June 2017, having increased by 8% in the first six months.
For further information, please contact:
Kaido Saar, Chairman of the Management Board of Bigbank AS
E-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: +372 6 681 333
Sven Raba, Chairman of the Management Board of Bigbank AS as of 1 September 2017
E-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: +372 6 681 333