Russian banking sector profit will be lower than in 2024, but no signs of crisis - Gref

ST. PETERSBURG. June 19 (Interfax) - Russian banking sector profit in 2025 will be lower than last year's record 3.8 trillion rubles, but there are no signs of crisis in the sector, Sberbank chief Herman Gref said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"I think that banking sector profit will be lower this year. And banks always get all the problems that arise in the economy at the next stage. We see now that a lot of enterprises are starting to have trouble servicing loans, and cost of risk and provisioning is also going up for banks. This will likely continue until the end of this year," Gref said.

"On the other hand, banks are seeing the difficulties and because their loan portfolios are not growing so quickly this year, they are starting to increase their so-called capital base. They are increasing capital and preparing, let's say, for difficult times. But in general, we do not yet see any fundamental signs that a banking crisis will occur. In general, the situation is quite stable," he said.

The Central Bank in June confirmed its forecast for Russian banking sector profit in 2025 at 3-3.5 trillion rubles and said there were no grounds for changing the forecast.