Sberbank forced to introduce negative rates on legal entities' deposits, will not apply exact same measures on individuals in 2022 - Gref

ST. PETERSBURG. June 17 (Interfax) - Sberbank , just like other sanctioned credit institutions, has been forced to divest of its forex liabilities, and it is introducing and will continue to introduce negative rates on the foreign currency accounts of legal entities, CEO Herman Gref told reporters.

"When talking about forex liabilities, then they need to be divided into two parts. The first is legal entities. Of course, we are introducing and will continue to introduce negative rates. There is simply no other option for banks in the specially designated nationals and blocked persons (SDN) list, because we do not have the opportunity to operate in [forex] currency today; we cannot build up forex assets, so we need to divest of liabilities," Gref said after Sberbank's business breakfast at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) 2022.

The CEO also noted the issues associated with opening a forex position. "Since forex is actually closed for us today, we cannot manage our currency position. After several months, our losses from an open currency position are significantly larger than the total losses from forming reserves," Gref said.

"Of course, all banks, SDN banks in any case, will divest themselves of forex. We will do the same," Gref said.

Sberbank meantime does not plan to introduce commissions on the forex accounts of individuals, at least as long as the ruble remains strong.

"In terms of the deposits of individuals, we have considered the subject, and we do not plan to introduce negative rates on the deposits of individuals. We understand that people have nowhere to go. It is not rational to go into the ruble now with such a strong currency. Introducing negative rates today would mean that clients, individuals, would be at an impasse; therefore, we will not do this at least until the currency, the ruble, has depreciated sufficiently, so that people could easily switch from foreign currency to rubles without losing income. I think that this opportunity could emerge by the end of the year. Maybe next year it would be possible to think about it, but we will definitely not do it this year," Gref said.