Limited reporting – Newspaper Kommersant No. 39 (7484) of 03/09/2023

OTP-Bank disclosed financial statements for 2022 according to new templates from the Bank of Russia. The data show a sharp increase in the capital adequacy ratio with a reduction in assets and the amount of own funds following the results of the crisis year. This situation may be caused by the easing of the Central Bank, experts say. At the same time, the reporting does not disclose a number of indicators that were determined by the regulator at the end of 2022, which leaves many questions about the current situation in the banking sector.

OTP-Bank was the first of the major retail banks to publish financial statements for 2022. It is disclosed according to the new rules that the Central Bank approved on December 29, 2022. In particular, the balance sheet, income statement, capital adequacy statement, statement of changes in equity, and information on mandatory ratios have been published. All this fit into 15 pages, while before the reports of banks (including the explanatory note) took 40-60 pages and sometimes even went beyond a hundred.

At the end of the year, the bank’s loss amounted to 179 million rubles. against 2.6 billion rubles. profit a year earlier, net interest income after provisions decreased from 12.3 billion to 7.9 billion rubles. At the same time, a sharp increase in bank capital adequacy ratios is noticeable. Over the year, the H1.0 ratio increased by 6.1 percentage points (p.p.) to 17.87%, and turned out to be higher than the average for the sector (12.7%).

The bank’s capital adequacy ratios could rise sharply in the spring of 2022, this was facilitated by the easing of the Central Bank in terms of the abolition of allowances for risk ratios on unsecured consumer loans issued from March 1, 2022, banking expert Alexei Nechaev believes. “This, in particular, is evidenced by a 30% reduction in the bank’s risk-weighted assets, which occurred against the background of an increase in net loan debt and weak capital dynamics,” he explains. Almost all retail banks should have faced an abnormal increase in capital adequacy ratios in the first quarter of 2022, Mr. Nechaev expects.

But in the future, capital adequacy ratios for retail banks may decrease against the backdrop of the introduction of macroprudential limits (MPL) in terms of consumer loans, Anastasia Terekhina, a partner at FBK audit and consulting company, believes. MPLs have been operating since the beginning of 2023 and limit the share of consumer loans with a high debt burden (PTI over 80%) to 25%, the share of loans for a period of more than five years – to 10%. According to Denis Taradov, a partner at the Unicon audit and consulting group, the new instrument will increase pressure on capital, as certain groups of loans will be subject to higher weights.

According to the standards of the Central Bank, the bank does not disclose a number of indicators, including the financial result from operations with foreign currency and derivative financial instruments (DFI). As Anastasia Terekhina notes, as a rule, derivatives are denominated in foreign currencies, which can significantly affect the financial result of the bank, so the closure of this indicator to some extent “protects the bank from any sanctions.”

At the same time, the bank does not provide the total amount of provisions for loan impairment, but reflected the amount of accrued provisions for loans over the past year – 6.9 billion rubles. against 2.5 billion rubles. a year earlier (an increase of 2.7 times). In the sector as a whole, banks created five times more reserves than in 2021, according to the Central Bank. “Loans are the main asset of the bank. Loss reserves indicate the quality of the loan portfolio, they reflect the level of financial stability of the bank as a whole,” notes Denis Taradov.

OTP-Bank’s dynamics of assets at risk (their main part is usually accounted for by the loan portfolio) and the net loan portfolio differ greatly. Thus, assets at risk decreased by 83.5 billion rubles, while the net loan portfolio increased by 19.9 billion rubles. According to Ms. Terekhina, this is either due to the fact that the quality of the portfolio could improve and the created reserves were dissolved, or the bank could sell the portfolio of securities, which could lead to a reduction in the part of assets at risk.

Olga Sherunkova