Russian banks in 2022 received 203 billion rubles of profit

The Russian banking sector in 2022 was able to compensate for the losses of the first half of the year and become profitable. According to the Central Bank, it amounted to 203 billion rubles. This is stated in the Banking Sector Development Review. Profit declined significantly compared to the record result of 2021, when banks earned RUB 2.4 trillion. At the same time, losses in the first half of 2022 exceeded 1.5 trillion rubles. mainly due to currency revaluation. However, in the second half of the year, the sector showed monthly profit, which in December reached 342 billion rubles. Of the entire sector, only Sberbankwhose profit at the end of 2022 amounted to 300 billion rubles.

Some credit institutions ended the year with significant losses, but the share of profitable banks in terms of assets reached 77%, and their number was 270. “This result … was facilitated by the gradual recovery of core income against the backdrop of lower rates and business growth in the second half of the year,” explains in the Central Bank.

The negative foreign exchange revaluation, which at its peak reached 1 trillion rubles, gradually decreased due to the weakening of the ruble against the backdrop of a long foreign exchange position in some banks, and at the end of the year amounted to only 0.4 trillion rubles. At the same time, against the backdrop of a sharp increase in funding costs, the net interest margin was shrinking (to 2.9% in the second quarter of 2022), but remained positive due to the high share of current accounts, and in the last quarter of 2022 even exceeded the pre-crisis level (4 .7%).

At the end of last year, the Bank of Russia cautiously predicted the sector’s performance. In early December 2022, Alexander Danilov, director of the Banking Regulation and Analytics Department of the Central Bank, said that the financial result could be “near zero”, based on the sector’s monthly profit in August-September of about 200 billion rubles.

Olga Sherunkova