After the introduction of large-scale sanctions, many foreign banking groups left Russia. Among them are French Societe Generale, American Citigroup, Czech PPF Group, British HSBC, Swedish Ikano Bank.
At the beginning of August 2023, the Austrian group Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) moved the spin-off of its Russian business from the end of September to the end of 2023, said Johann Strobl, CEO of the group.
A little less, since August last year, the “withdrawal from Russia” of the Hungarian banking group OTP Bank Group, represented in our country by OTP Bank, has been going on. Group CEO Sandor Chani said that the business in Russia and Ukraine is planned to be maintained in the long term. However, the group stopped investing in Russian government securities and started to reduce its corporate loan portfolio in Russia. Later, the bank's statements included the wording about the sale of the Russian business «at an acceptable price».
But, perhaps, the most important thing, sad and disturbing for the Russian OTP Bank, is the decision to terminate its financing by the parent company. Shandor Chani emphasized that there is a risk of a lack of liquidity for the Russian division. Translated into everyday language, this means that the bank simply does not have enough money to fulfill its obligations to customers. It is precisely the lack of liquidity that is associated with, perhaps, the largest banking crisis in modern Russia, which occurred in 1998.
According to Kommersant, the Russian subsidiary of the Hungarian bank operates primarily in the segment of risky unsecured lending to the population, attracting funds mainly from individuals. The international agency Fitch Ratings has already downgraded the rating of OTP Bank, however, domestic ratings, apparently, allowed this bank to participate in auctions to raise funds from the federal and regional budgets, as well as attract deposits from institutional investors and large companies. Deprived of Western funding, OTP Bank, apparently, revised its policy, but today the bank is not having an easy time.
The Bank of Russia is pursuing a strict regulatory policy. Based on the results of the crisis year 2022, OTP Bank disclosed its financial statements and demonstrated “a sharp increase in the capital adequacy ratio while reducing assets and equity,” Kommersant reports. “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. 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. These indicators say little to the average bank client, but demonstrate that he is in the «zone of turbulence».
The messages about lawsuits against OTP Bank that have appeared in the media in recent months are also alarming. One of them is related to the bank's failure to fulfill its obligations to the Capital Repair Fund of Moscow. Thus, OTP Bank was known as a significant participant in the Russian market of bank guarantees in the field of public procurement. Now arbitration courts are dealing with claims for the recovery of multimillion-dollar debts.
According to the Novy Vzglyad online publication, “large corporate clients began to leave the bank. The uncertainty of the situation forces them to transfer their funds to other financial institutions… Hundreds of complaints from OTP Bank clients can be found on the Internet.
This caution can be understood: on the one hand, there are certain risks, on the other hand, the Hungarian owner can either sell its Russian subsidiary or simply liquidate it.
It seems that if a couple of years ago the presence of a foreign owner in a bank was a plus and gave additional guarantees to its customers, today the situation seems to be , has changed in a mirror: Western owners can become a risk factor for Russian financial institutions.