Peter Surek

Peter Surek is Head of Social banking at Erste Group and CEO of Erste Social Finance Holding. He is a retail and social banker with 20+ years of experience in different Central and Eastern European markets. After graduation at the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia, he started his career in Tatra banka, Slovakia from the bottom and spent 8 years going through almost all the positions in the retail branch network. Within his engagement with Raiffeisen Bank International he was managing multiple projects in Austria, Albania and Croatia and in 2009-2011 he co-founded the new direct bank, leading products and business processes development.

In 2011 he joined Erste Group as the Head of the new established Retail MIS unit. After getting to know the social background of Erste, he decided to leave his retail career for developing social banking in the CEE countries. Since May 2013 he leads the new created unit Social banking development, reporting directly to Erste Group CEO. Within the last years he has consistently implemented social banking in all Erste core markets, building thus Europe-wide unique platform for financial inclusion. Since 2019 he acts as member of European Microfinance Network's Board of Directors.