CBR expects "nothing terrible" to happen after changes to deposit rate calculations
MOSCOW. Sept 28 (Interfax) - The Central Bank of Russia's transition to a new method for calculating the average maximum interest rate on retail deposits at the country's top 10 banks and the resulting change in the CBR's recommendations for deposit rates will not result in any "terrible" changes for banks, CBR first deputy chairman Alexei Simanovsky said.
It was reported earlier that starting in October the CBR has promised to keep a close eye on deposits on which interest rates are more than two percentage points higher than the average maximum rate on retail deposits at the top 10 banks, not including rates on combined deposit products.
"After two percentage points even nothing terrible will happen. The world will not turn upside down. The Central Bank will simply take off the rose-colored glasses, which it never has, it will take a special instrument, look through binoculars there, through a magnifying glass (sometimes it is necessary to look through a microscope), at what is happening at the given bank," Simanovsky said on Rossiya 24 television.
The CBR in mid-September changed the rules for calculating the average maximum interest rate on retail deposits at the ten largest banks. It will now additionally calculate rates without including combined deposit products.
In October, the CBR will begin monitoring the average maximum interest rate, using interest rates only on deposits not taking into account combined deposit products (in the first 20 days of September it was 9.35%). The regulator will pay special attention to cases where deposit rates deviate from the average market maximum rate by more than 2 percentage points.
Until recently, while the average maximum rate was determined with inclusion of deposits with additional conditions (it was 10.53% in the second ten days of September), the CBR recommended to banks that their average interest rates on deposits should not exceeded the average maximum by more than 1.5 percentage points.
Therefore, now the benchmark for banks would be 11.35% (based on rates on deposits without combined products) instead of 12.03%.
The ten banks monitored by the CBR include Sberbank , VTB 24 , Bank of Moscow , Raiffeisenbank, Gazprombank , Russky Standart Bank , Alfa Bank , Uralsib Bank , Promsvyazbank and Russian Agricultural Bank .
