VTB Bank organized a bank day at SPbGASU. The meeting of students with bank employees became part of extracurricular activities aimed at developing soft skills and increasing financial literacy of students.

Bank specialists talked about how to protect your money and get additional savings, save on commissions and transfers, about current banking products and cybersecurity rules in the financial sector.

VTB customer service manager Vladislav Selikhov told how to recognize telephone scammers and reminded that the caller, no matter who he introduces himself, has the main goal - to obtain bank card details and personal data in order to subsequently debit money from the account.

– The attackers pose themselves as bank employees, the security service of the payment system and the Central Bank, employees of the social fund and housing office, police officers and charitable foundations. The only correct decision in such a situation is to hang up and call back to these services and organizations at the numbers indicated in receipts and on official websites, to the banks’ hotlines. Never answer the phone with the word “yes”: criminals can use the recording of your answer in other scams. Please note that scammers usually call at inconvenient times: Friday evenings, weekends, Monday mornings. In addition, they use background noise to simulate a call center, applying pressure to make a decision very quickly. In this way, they put the potential victim into a state of emotional imbalance and convince them that everything is being done in their own interests,” said Vladislav Selikhov.

• They also talked about online fraud. To protect your money, you do not need to call back unknown numbers or follow the links provided in SMS newsletters. “The bank card is blocked, for more information please call the number...”, “Replenishment of your phone through bank cards is included in the prizes”, “Sorry, I put money in you by mistake. Please return to this number”, “Payment on the marketplace... successfully reserved. If you haven’t completed the transaction, call the number…” – these are the most common messages from scammers.

Ilya Shmatov

Students also asked questions about the possibility of earning money through banking products, such as bonds. Ilya Shmatov, chief manager of the retail business development department of the Smolninsky subsidiary of VTB Bank, noted:

– I was pleasantly surprised by the feedback and glad that the guys showed interest, among other things, in financial products, the analysis of which requires fairly deep financial knowledge. This event gives students the opportunity to learn about all current products not only of our bank, but also of the financial market as a whole. Primary knowledge will be useful to them in the near future: at the time of employment, they will have an idea of ​​the benefits of salary clients of a particular bank. For the university, the benefit of such events is that graduates will be more competent in the financial segment, which will help them in the labor market. The bank acts as an SPbGASU partner within the framework of the salary project and is interested in its clients knowing all the advantages of banking products and being able to use them. Therefore, I hope that such financial literacy events can be held regularly.