MOSCOW (Reuters) – State-owned Russian bank VTB said it expects the retail lending market to go into hibernation mode this year as banks prioritise the quality of their loan portfolios with the central bank’s key rate at 21%.
Lending growth remained high in 2024, even as the central bank steadily hiked rates to the highest level in over 20 years, but a decline in the retail segment, particularly in mortgage and consumer loans, is probable this year, said Georgy Gorshkov, deputy president and chairman of VTB’s management board.
“The retail credit market will go into hibernation this year,” Gorshkov told reporters. “Its contraction will be the maximum in recent years.”
“The portrait of a retail borrower will change in favour of clients with a low debt load and those who qualify for government programmes.”
Gorshkov said VTB’s retail customers last year made 2.1 million cross-border transfers in currencies of countries that have not imposed sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine, a six-fold increase on 2023.
“The volume of transactions exceeded 50.5 billion roubles ($515.33 million),” Gorshkov said, estimating this would rise to more than 240 billion roubles in 2025.
Major Russian banks were blocked from dollar markets and the SWIFT global payments system soon after Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine in February 2022, complicating the cross-border flow of funds.
($1 = 97.9955 roubles)
(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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