Rosbank cut profit fourfold – Finance – Kommersant

Rosbank earned RUB 4.9 billion in 2022. profit under IFRS against 19.6 billion rubles. a year earlier. This profit allows you to pay dividends. However, their size has not yet been disclosed, since the decision has not been made.

Natalya Voevodina, chairman of the board of the bank, told journalists about the financial results of the group. What exactly is included in the perimeter of the group, the bank does not disclose due to sanctions risks. According to SPARK, Rosbank also has a management company RB Capital, as well as RB Leasing, RB Factoring and other structures, and a microcredit company (RB Credit) also appeared at the end of the year. The bank has not yet disclosed its RAS financial result.

Net interest income grew by 14% to RUB 53.9 billion, net commissions grew by 4% to RUB 13.4 billion. The net result of financial operations increased more than seven times, to 15.7 billion rubles. This includes trading income in the capital markets. The cost of reserves increased by 8.5 times, to 35.2 billion rubles. The bank does not specify what part of the reserves falls on the loan portfolio. The retail portfolio grew by 3%, mainly due to mortgages, to RUB 593 billion, while the corporate portfolio remained virtually unchanged, amounting to RUB 357 billion. Client funds of the population grew by 3%, to 379 billion rubles, legal entities – by 8%, to 807 billion rubles.

“We offered customers different options for settlement and cash services, which itself was undergoing a transformation in 2022,” she said. The Bank worked all year on the payment infrastructure in different currencies, expanding the possibilities of transactions in soft currencies.

Rosbank came under US sanctions in December 2022, and in February 2023, under EU sanctions. Currently, 47.5% of the shares belong to the Vladimir Potanin Charity Foundation, 45% to Interros, another 7.5% were bought by Rosbank for the motivational program of top managers. After the sale, the bank and the former owner, the French group Societe Generale, do not have any unfulfilled mutual obligations or claims, Ms. Vojvodina specified. According to her, after falling under the sanctions, the bank received a notice to suspend the Transition Service Agreement (TSA; an agreement on the transfer of services when changing ownership).

“We operate completely independently,” she said, but the bank has a nostro account in euros, and until August 26, final transactions can be carried out on it.

After falling under US and EU sanctions, Rosbank lost part of its correspondent accounts in friendly currencies, Natalya Voevodina said. “It is no secret that players are afraid of secondary sanctions. We are a difficult partner for them,” Ms. Voevodina noted. “Nevertheless, the overall scope of opportunities to pay through Rosbank to a client who conducts foreign economic activity in one direction or another is still preserved. In yuan, we are quite good, in various other currencies.” Among others, Ms. Voevodina noted the currencies of the countries of the near abroad (Azerbaijani manats, Kyrgyz soms, Belarusian ruble, etc.) and said that Rosbank, assuming the possibility of being blacklisted by sanctions, opened more than one nostro account for each currency.

According to Natalya Voevodina, the bank sought to “open as many” correspondent accounts as possible in the summer and fall of 2022, and in addition, so that the correspondent bank could exchange information with Rosbank outside of SWIFT. Now there are other tasks, for example, setting up the correct payment route, the top manager says. “Such fast and cheap (currency.— “b”) there will be no more calculations, as before. Now it’s a matter of finding the right payment route, selecting correspondent banks,” Ms. Voevodina emphasized. Against this background, the currency value of the balance sheet decreased: the share of the dollar and the euro in the balance sheet “decreased very much,” Ms. Vojvodina said. “We followed this and worked on it throughout 2022,” the head of the bank said, adding that the share of the euro and the dollar was “heavy” for the bank. And the yuan is now the fourth currency (after the ruble, dollar and euro). At the same time, in the settlements of clients who are engaged in foreign economic activity and who cannot pay in dollars and euros, approximately one third of the settlements fall on the yuan, two thirds – the ruble, Ms. Voevodina said.

The bank continues to use a number of easing. At the beginning of 2023, the bank has 1.6 million retail customers, 84 thousand customers of the small business segment, as well as 13 thousand corporate customers. The strategic goal is to earn 45 billion rubles a year by 2027. profits, increase the customer base of retail customers to 3 million individuals, corporate customers to 50 thousand customers, and in the small business segment to achieve growth to 200 thousand customers.

Olga Sherunkova