January sees trend towards growth in retail and corporate lending continue

In January 2019, changes to credit institutions’ accounting policies (including the Chart of Accounts) took effect with due account of IFRS 9 ‘Financial Instruments’. This had a strong impact on the structure and size of credit institutions’ balance sheet.

Excluding the effect of adjustments and fair value revaluation of assets, the main trends in the banking sector that took shape in 2018 remained the same, reports the information and analytical material ‘Review of the Banking Sector of the Russian Federation in 2018 and January 2019’.

Growth in corporate (+0.8%) and retail (+1.3%) lending continued. The credit portfolio increase was accompanied by its dedollarisation: the share of the FX component in the corporate portfolio fell by 1.6 pp in January 2019 to 27.2% and in the retail portfolio it remained unchanged at 0.7%.

Under the impact of seasonal factors, the volume of household deposits dropped, while the volume of funds in corporate accounts rose by 3.8%.