MOSCOW, October 31 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian Post will open brokerage accounts for trade in securities on the exchange from November 1.
The new service will be tested in three pilots regions: Astrakhan, Volgograd and Chuvashia. If successful, it will be expanded to the rest of the country.
“Post offices will become an element of national stock market infrastructure. The new joint project with the investment holding FINAM, the absence of a commission house in a region will no longer be an obstacle to exchange trade in securities,” Russian Post said on Monday, October 31.
When opening an account at an post office, the customer will get access to the leading trade platforms such as QUIK, TRANSAQ, Finam Trade, and TS Lab. Project initiators say that there are “more than enough [of them] for effective trade in different financial instruments”.
Russian Post is making plans for offering more services.
“We try to provide such a range of services and products in the post offices that will meet the needs and expectations of our customers in the best possible way,” Russian Post Deputy Director General Igor Mandrykin said, adding that his company was “open to cooperation with partners”.
For example, Russian Post’s branch providing express delivery services, EMS Russian Post, has announced recently a new business class service called “Personal Courier”.
The service became available in Moscow from September 6 and will be offered in other regions of the country later.
The service will guarantee the delivery in Russia of important express mailings weighing no more than 5 kilograms. “A post official will accompany the mailing along the route across the country, without letting it out of his hands until delivery. This will help avoid additional mail sorting,” EMS said.
“If the services proves successful in Moscow and the Moscow region, it will be extended to the rest of the country, and domestic mailings will be accepted by ‘personal couriers’ in many regions,” EMS Russian Post Director Yevgeny Chechelnitsky said.
Russian Post also started using new postage marking, the letter D, for registered mail from September 1.
“It will be easier and more comfortable to send registered letters weighing up to 20 grams. Senders now can send registered mail in new envelopes marked ‘D’, thus saving their time,” the press service of Russian Post said.
Two million new envelopes have been printed up to date.
According to Russian Post, about 112 million registered letters are sent annually.
Russian Post has announced plans to expand the sale of train and plane tickets more than 30 times.
This will make the network of the national postal operator the biggest ticket-selling network in the country.
“The project will start off in Sakhalin, Krasnoyarsk and Krasnodar territories before the end of August,” Russian Post said earlier. “By the end of the year, online train and plane tickets will be available for Russian Post customers across the country.
Currently post offices in 17 Russian regions sell electronic train and air tickets.
Russian Post will sell tickets of 200 airlines to any destination, including international flights. The tickets will be sold in all of more than 20,000 post offices connected to the Internet.
Russian Post has opened a public reception office for its customers and employees who need consultation or who want to file a complaint.
“The main purpose of the new service is to provide quick and proper consultation or get feedback for the management,” Russian Post said on Saturday, July 30.
A person can also send a message by telephone, mail or e-mail. Replies will be mailed to the applicant’s postal address.
Russian Post said the director-general, his deputies and the heads of branches would receive citizens personally every month.
“We want to know of all flaws in our work and hope for your help,” Russian Post Director-General Alexander Kiselev said.
Russian Post may become a global operator of the most frequently requested public services rendered to the population under the E-Government Program. It will use its own technological infrastructure to this end, Kiselev said earlier.
“Russian Post offers its own way of implementing the E-Government Programme,” he said. “At the initial stage, given the low level of computerization in regions, especially in rural areas, we suggest that the post offices should provide in a one-stop mode the most frequently requested public services that can be rendered today using the post service's technological infrastructure,” Kiselev said.
“After the creation and launching of the nationwide state information centre and the specialised Internet portal /ogic.ru/, where public services will be available to citizens and organisations in the electronic form, Russian Post will offer a broad network of Internet collective access points for people to use the relevant Internet services,” he noted.
According to Kiselev, “The green light to the E-Government will speed up the modernisation of Russian Post to turn it into a universal provider of services to the population.” He believes that this “may make the company attractive to investors in the future. We also have the potential to broaden the range of services for small and medium-size business, specifically those related to the creation of companies, the licensing of certain activities, etc.”