The rates are reduced

Sberbank seeks to keep his debtors Sberbank since May 2 reduces loans for individuals. Mortgage loans are cheaper by 1.5%, car loans - by 2.5%, and loans for education - by 5%. But more recently, the president, the chairman of the board of Sberbank, Andrei Kazmin, assured journalists that he did not see any reason to reduce consumer loans. According to him, Sberbank is calmly experiencing a fall in the fraction of the lending market in 2006 from 44 to 37%. Now these assurances in the past - the bank has worried about the "further growth of consumer activity."

The decision of the leadership of Sberbank to reduce loan rates completely copies his own strategy in relation to deposits. The media has repeatedly noted that Sberbank, using the position of the largest player in the market, kept betting on deposits below the average market. However, over the past few years, competitors have “seized” the largest Russian bank a fair amount of depositors, and therefore, last year, the rates were revised towards the increase and were brought to the level of most of the proposals of competitors.

A similar situation is in the loans market. The proposals of most large banks are more profitable than that of Sberbank. In addition, many banks began to refinance mortgage loans, namely Sberbank was one of the first to work with a mortgage when the bets on it were much higher than the current ones. Therefore, it is from him that the debtors will begin to leave, transferring their loans to other banks. This situation cannot arrange the leadership of Sberbank. Moreover, the money raised during the sale of shares of this bank requires profitable placement. And the times when a simple mortgage proposal provided a guaranteed influx of customers, irrevocably left. As a result, the loss of a share in the loan market may result in the fact that the capitalization of the bank in the stock market will fall.

05/02/2007 / Evgeny Mazin Material Published in the newspaper No. 78 dated 03.05.2007.