At work with Boris Dyakonov

Boris Dyakonov’s talent and entrepreneurial spirit have seen him taking a rich variety of banking industry positions in the past 21 years before founding the Tochka bank for entrepreneurs. He told Efma’s Boris Plantier about his life and work.

Tell me a little about your background.

My career has had quite a few twists. I have been a nurse assistant, a Methodist pastor, a programmer and a systems administrator. For the last 20 years and more I’ve been working on internet banking solutions for SMEs and individuals.

In 1998 I joined Severnaya Kazna bank, where I worked as an internet technologies engineer before heading the information system support department and then the innovative technologies department. In 2002 I was invited by Sergei Lapshin to become a co-owner of UralContactBank, which he had founded, and which later became Bank24.ru. I took several executive positions at the bank and helped to coordinate projects including modernization of the bank’s information system, creating its own card processing and the launch of the entrepreneur-oriented intra-bank startup Knopka.

After the bank closed I was appointed senior vice president of the Khanty-Mansiysk bank Otkrytie. I brought 350 Bank24.ru employees with me and started to create Tochka, a service for small businesses which we launched in 2015. By 2017, Tochka led the Markswebb Rank & Report banking rating in three categories: Bank for self-employed entrepreneurs without employees, Bank for trade and service companies, and Bank for companies engaged in foreign trade activities.