Sberbank collects clients in the Crimea

Sberbank, which began expanding in the Crimea this year, disclosed the first figures, reporting several thousand corporate clients. But there are no bank offices in the region yet, they are promised to open before the end of the year. The main competition will unfold with the local leader – RNKB, now owned by VTB, and other federal banks. Experts do not expect a mass transition of customers to Sberbank.

Sberbank disclosed the first results of work in the Crimea, where the credit institution officially entered only on March 2. In less than a month and a half, Sberbank attracted about 400 entrepreneurs for settlement services, and 230 million rubles were issued to small businesses. loans. In general, the bank serves 3.5 thousand representatives of business and organizations of the peninsula. Sberbank did not answer Kommersant’s question about retail clients.

So far, Sberbank clients in Crimea are served only by field managers, there are no branches in the region (but there are 30 ATMs).

The first attempts to open a bank office turned into difficulties with local residents. Sberbank planned to do this on the territory of the Trenev Park in the center of Simferopol. But the residents did not support this option (according to opinion polls), and they had to look for a new place. Only the other day, the head of the Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, made it clear: the Sberbank office will open near the Crimean Musical Theatre. By the end of the year, the official specified, branches of Sberbank will appear in Simferopol and Yalta, then in Kerch and Evpatoria.

Sberbank was present in Crimea until 2014, that is, before the annexation of the peninsula to Russia. He decided to return to the region only after large-scale sanctions against the entire financial system of the Russian Federation (see “Kommersant” dated January 19).

By this time, the market already had a leader in the person of the local RNCB (now owned by VTB). The bank has 135 branches in the Crimea and Sevastopol.

As RNKB explained to Kommersant, at the beginning of April, the number of active retail clients in the region exceeded 2 million people, corporate – 83.5 thousand.

The retail loan portfolio at the end of the first quarter of 2023 is RUB 111.2 billion, the corporate loan portfolio is RUB 140.8 billion.

Of the federal players, one of the first to come to the peninsula in 2014 was AB Rossiya, which quickly fell under sanctions (since 2020, it has been acting as a sanatorium of the Crimean Genbank). Over the course of a year, Promsvyazbank was able to become a noticeable, but incomparable in terms of business scale, player in the region with RNCB (it has been operating in Crimea since April 2022, the client base is 50 thousand individuals and legal entities).

Until recently, Crimea was unattractive for most major federal players because of its “sanctioned nature,” Vyacheslav Putilovsky, junior director for banking ratings at Expert RA, notes. Now the situation has changed, sanctions have already been introduced against most large banks, the expert says. According to him, RNKB will become the main competitor of Sberbank.

The CEO of Businessdrome, Pavel Samiev, believes that “over time” Sberbank will take a significant market share in Crimea, but “incomparable to that which it has in other regions.”

A mass transition to Sberbank is not worth waiting for, the expert believes, the vast majority of citizens and companies in the region are already covered by banking services. “If the client is satisfied with everything, then what is the point of switching,” Mr. Saimiev explains.

At the same time, much will depend on tariffs (pricing policy) and bonus programs, as well as on the availability of Sberbank ecosystem services for local customers. “Scaling, including the retail business, will depend on the bank’s ability to offer competitive products,” notes Mr. Putilovsky. “The bank has everything for this, and the number of branches in this case is unprincipled due to the development of electronic services.”

Other banks, mostly small ones, also plan to develop their business in Crimea. Thus, CMR Bank, which is mainly engaged in organizing banking services in the DPR and LPR, notes that, “given the high potential of the market of the Republic of Crimea, the bank plans to launch products and services for retail and corporate clients of the peninsula in 2023.”

In March, an absolutely new player entered the Crimea – a small regional Rostov bank RostFinance. In the same month, he opened the first branch in the LPR, according to the Central Bank website. Now there are eight banks in one form or another on the peninsula.

Olga Sherunkova