LPB Bank (previously ''Latvijas Pasta Banka'') is a

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

n bank. It has stated that its focus is providing

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

acting as a

payment service provider A payment service provider (PSP) is a third-party company that assists businesses to accept electronic payments, such as credit cards and debit cards payments. PSPs act as intermediaries between those who make payments, i.e. consumers, and thos ...

fintech Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are r ...

, business finance and brokerage services. The bank has a large proportion of non-Latvian clients. The bank is a member of the Finance Latvia Association, which representing the Latvian financial sector on a national and international level.

History

Foundation

It was founded on 5 September 2008 and changed its name to LPB Bank on 15 December 2017. It is

joint stock company A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership). Shareholders are ...

100% owned by holding company Mono. The bank head office building was initially intended for the needs of the “

Aeroflot PJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines (russian: ПАО "Аэрофло́т — Росси́йские авиали́нии", ), commonly known as Aeroflot ( or ; russian: Аэрофлот, , ), is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. The ...

” central agency and was built between 1984 and 1991. Modris Ģelzis, one of the trailblazers in contemporary Latvian architecture, created each façade radically differently. initially, the dominant of the building's centerpiece was a

Rubik's cube The Rubik's Cube is a Three-dimensional space, 3-D combination puzzle originally invented in 1974 by Hungarians, Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the Magic Cube, the puzzle was licensed by Rubik t ...

, counterbalanced by a traditional building element – a nearby

wind vane A wind vane, weather vane, or weathercock is an instrument used for showing the direction of the wind. It is typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building. The word ''vane'' comes from the Old English word , m ...

Investigations and fines

It was named in the investigation into the

2014 Moldovan bank fraud scandal In 2014, $1 billion disappeared from three Moldovan banks: ''Banca de Economii'', ''Unibank'' and ''Banca Socială''.ABLV Bank ABLV Bank was one of the largest private banks in the Baltic states, Baltic States, headquartered in Riga, Latvia with representative offices abroad from 1993 to 2018. Following accusations of money laundering by the United States Department of ...

and PrivatBank It was fined 305,000

Euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...

s for its part in this. In 2018, it was fined 2.2 million Euros by Latvia's ''Financial and Capital Market Commission'' (FKTK), 10% of its turnover, for "continuous non-compliance" with anti-

money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...

and counter-terrorist financing legislation. The FCMC said, amongst other issues, that "''the Bank failed to give sufficient weight to the unusually large, complex, inter-related transactions that have no apparent economic or visible lawful purpose''".

New direction

In 2018, the bank submitted to the FCMC a new strategy of the operation foresees the focus of the provision of FinTech services, e-commerce, the banks reorientation from the

CIS countries The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional intergovernmental organization in Eurasia. It was formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It covers an area of and has an estimated population of 239,796,010. ...

to the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Ass ...

(EEA), OECD.

References

External links

* Banks of Latvia {{Europe-bank-stub