Greece has all the prerequisites to grow internationally in the field of technology companies, said Piraeus CEO Christos Megalou, speaking at the 11th Delphi Economic Forum.

During his intervention in a panel discussion on “The Banking System and the New Generation of Unicorns”, he highlighted that there is now experience in the country of many successful examples of technology, such as Natech with which Piraeus has created neobank Snappi, adding that the Bank is present to support all these initiatives.

Accordingly, in the field of defence where there is a plan to develop purely European initiatives, Greece has all the necessary capabilities to contribute substantially to this, the Piraeus CEO said. Asked about this, he referred to the proposal he has made to formulate a model for financing investments in the defence and security sector along the lines of the Recovery and Resilience Fund.

Megalou also pointed out that technology is a key element of Piraeus’ journey and part of the bank’s DNA. He cited as an example the collaboration with Natech to create Snappi, which has already produced significant results, with around 100 thousand customers.

“The journey since 2022 when we started a dialogue to create a digital bank has been challenging and difficult, but at the same time very rewarding. It has been a learning journey – a process of empowering our people to be able to evaluate business models that were not traditionally embedded in the Greek banking system. It showed us what it really means to be meaningfully involved and doing business with innovation,” he noted.

Mr. Megalou stressed that Piraeus’ ambition is to stay close to the technology ecosystem, which is successful in Greece, citing Navarino, Yodeck and Epignosis as examples,the heads of which Vangelis Michalopoulos, Dimitris Tsikopoulos and Dimitris Tsigos were his panelists and spoke at length about the support they have received from the Bank for their growth and international presence.

This ecosystem has been created thanks to the high level of technological education, the skills and potential of people, extroversion, and the ability to create global businesses, starting from a small scale and gradually evolving.

In terms of their financing, Piraeus has gained the advantage thanks to Snappi’s experience of being able to reliably examine data and understand industry business models and, through financing, add further value to the high-tech intelligence efforts and products being developed. “Today, we are in a position to evaluate almost every technology company that we will consider for funding in the future and we have a clear intention to actively cultivate this ecosystem,” he said.

The Piraeus CEO also referred to the potential for capital market funding and the momentum added by the inclusion of the Athens Stock Exchange in Euronext Athens, a European platform with greater liquidity and increased capabilities. “We are particularly interested, when the right maturity comes along, in supporting the transition of these companies towards listing on Euronext Athens, offering them an equity platform that will enhance the values we want to create.”