Welcome to „Discover CEE“!

This is Raiffeisen Bank International’s blog and information platform for leading experts, analysts and successful entrepreneurs and companies, to share their ideas, visions and experiences about doing business in CEE. Our goal is to connect opinion leaders, inspire entrepreneurs and businesses and show the potential, diversity and beauty of the entire CEE region.

  • A reflection on CE/SEE recovery and convergence prospects in COVID-19 times

    By Gunter Deuber, RBI Vienna, Dorota Strauch, RBI in Poland, Zoltan Török, Head of Research at Raiffeisen Bank in Hungary and Zrinka Zivkovic Matijevic, Head of Research at Raiffeisen Bank in Croatia | The COVID-19 crisis is certainly a watershed event. After the deep 2020 economic slump, it could take until 2021 or 2022 for […]

  • “Act our way to new thinking” – Jenni Jepsen about Agile

    Jenni Jepsen is a transformation advisor at Denmark-based goAgile. She helps transforming organizations to achieve a lasting change. By working closely with the organizations, Jenni supports the people there in increasing organizational effectiveness, motivation and results. She consults, writes and speaks worldwide about leadership, communications and Agile. For Discover CEE, she answered some questions on […]

  • Working the agile way – why „common sense“ is almost a hype

    By Patricia Lang-Schönberger, RBI| Vanja Tokić has been Group Community Lead & Agile Coach for Advanced Analytics & Artificial Intelligence at RBI since 2018. He is responsible for nurturing the group-wide AA&AI Community across the RBI Group. He also supports the internal start-up team to continuously deliver data-driven innovations, by utilizing agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban) and […]

  • Lived sustainability in CEE

    By Benedikta Schlange, RBI| Do you want to experience CEE’s sustainable lifestyle? We have researched a few examples for you here. Feel free to add additional ideas in the comments! Fashion from Romania: Gnana was founded in 2017 by Floriana Sandu.Floriana Sandu and her team only work with natural materials of which 60 per cent […]

  • Leasing accelerates e-mobility

    By Anja Knass, RBI | Renato Eggner is the Managing Director of Raiffeisen-Leasing Fleet Management and for years a strong ambassador for e-mobility in Austria. In our interview he explains why leasing is an accelerator for e-mobility. Mr. Eggner, could you give us a quick overview on e-mobility in Austria? Eggner: According to the Austrian […]

  • What does responsible banking mean?

    By Eliza-Alina Gheorghe, Raiffeisen Bank Romania | The four pillars of responsible banking are: following the right way, keeping your promises, doing more than you are asked to and being trustworthy. Doing responsible banking means getting involved in sustainable and durable projects that are of value to our societies. In practice, it means offering customers […]

  • Responsible Banking: What banks can do to make a contribution to the current global problems

    By Alexandra Jocham, RBI | In the 21st century, we live in a world of global challenges such as climate change, financial crises, the COVID disease, rising political threats and ethical dilemmas. We face unprecedented levels of disruption in economics, social and environmental challenges of huge proportions. Banks as financial intermediaries play a key role […]

  • 7 reasons why the green transformation is a chance for banks in CEE

    By Jörg Bayer and Gunter Deuber, RBI Vienna | The green transformation in the financial world can no longer be stopped, and this is especially true in Europe, where the EU Commission and the ECB are now joining forces at the highest level to accelerate the green transformation, especially in fixed income markets; the latter […]

  • The new wave of supervisory expectations for the management and disclosure of climate-related and environmental risks

    By Christine Würfel, RBI | Despite the economic crisis triggered by the covid-19 pandemic, financial regulators and supervisors do not lose focus on a major long-term threat for financial stability: climate related and environmental risk. Supervisory Expectations The European Central Bank (ECB) has identified climate-related risks as a key risk driver on the Single Supervisory […]

  • Corona crisis: Adapting business to the new challenges – a case study with Ukrainian manufacturer Kievguma

    By Alexandra Jocham, RBI | We looked for a company that was particularly well adapted to the Corona crisis and found it in Kievguma, which now produces reusable protective clothing for medical personnel. Find out more about the Ukrainian manufacturer here. Kievguma https://kievguma.ua/ quickly reacted to the spread of the Coronavirus and launched the production […]

  • Austria and the “new normality”: Economic experiences of the “first mover”

    By Matthias Reith, RBI | As in most if not all other countries, also in Austria the lockdown and the subsequent easing of restrictions are the major drivers of business cycle dynamics since March. On March 16th, earlier than most other Western European countries, Austria implemented a complete lockdown, especially in the consumer-related service sectors, […]