The Swedish Swedbank operating in Latvia has announced that it will discontinue communication with clients in Russian starting in May. Why is that?
At the beginning of this week, Swedbank depositors received the following message from the bank:
"We inform you that starting from May 21 of this year, the provision of services and content (in the online bank, mobile application, and other places), as well as communication with clients will be conducted in Latvian and English. Content in Russian will no longer be available."
From this message, it is unclear whether bank clerks will respond to a grandmother-depositor if she personally comes to a Swedbank branch and speaks in Russian. And if they do respond, in what language will it be?
As for Swedbank clients who took out loans and made deposits using the Russian language, they are asked to update their settings by May 20, choosing Latvian or English.
Clients who disregard the bank's directive will have their communication language forcibly changed to Latvian on May 21.
One can only hope that Swedbank will not go further – and after replacing Cyrillic letters with Latin ones, will not want to change Arabic numerals to Roman ones.
