Post Bank aims to lower cost of risk by almost half to 10% by end of 2016
MOSCOW. Oct 6 (Interfax) - Post Bank plans to lower its cost of risk to 10% by the end of 2016 from 17%-19% at the beginning of the year, the Russian lender's CEO, Dmitry Rudenko said in an interview with Interfax.
"Our cost of risk is now around 12%. At the end of the year we want to reach a figure of 10%, for new lending an even lower figure," Rudenko said.
The bank has somewhat of an accumulated portfolio of overdue loans, he said. "In recent years back at Leto Bank we did not sell and did not write them off. Going forward, balancing in pure form begins. We can write off, we can sell, like many banks, simply clear the balance sheet, or if there are good buyers," Rudenko said.
The market for selling overdue debts is currently unfavourable for banks, he said. "There are old debts, they are still being collected. It's currently more lucrative to increase the effectiveness of collection than to sell the portfolio of overdue loans," Rudenko said.
He also said Post Bank intends to increase its loan portfolio by 50%-60% to 120 billion-125 billion rubles in 2016 from 78 billion rubles at the beginning of the year. In September, the bank forecast that its portfolio would grow to 125 billion-126 billion rubles by the end of the year.
Post Bank is a subsidiary of state banking group VTB and Russian Post that was established on the basis of Leto Bank. Post Bank was Russia's 80th largest bank by assets and 169th by retail deposits at the end of the first half of 2016, according to the Interfax-100 ranking of the country's lenders.