05 April 2013, 04:39 / Finance

DIA agrees to increase deposit insurance to 1 million rubles.

The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) agrees to increase deposit insurance to 1 million rubles if it gains the right to determine the amount of banks’ contributions to the insurance fund based on their “sustainability and transparency,” says Olga Plotonova in the bill prepared by the DIA

The head of the DIA, Yuri Isaev, wants to determine the amount of banks’ contributions to the insurance fund / V. Astapkovich / RIA Novosti

The DIA sent new amendments to the law on deposit insurance to the financial departments (Vedomosti has the text). The project still involves an increase in state guarantees from 700,000 to 1 million rubles, but it introduces new criteria for calculating bank contributions to the insurance fund.

Now all banks contribute 0.1% of attracted deposits to the fund. Large banks, especially state-owned ones, do not like this: small players lure depositors with high rates. Therefore, the previous version of the amendments made the amount of deductions dependent on the deposit rate (maximum - 0.3% of the amount of insured deposits).

Now the DIA proposes to calculate contributions based on “quantitative and qualitative indicators of the bank’s performance.” The base rate, the same for all, is expected to remain at 0.1%, and the additional rate will be calculated for each bank, but will not exceed 150% of the base one. According to the project, it will be calculated by the DIA based on information provided by the Central Bank within 50 days after the end of the quarter.

Banks must already meet the quantitative criteria proposed by the DIA to participate in the deposit insurance system: capital adequacy standards, liquidity, asset quality, risk concentration, profitability, etc. Among the qualitative indicators are transparency of the ownership structure, quality of corporate governance and internal control, etc. .

A DIA representative confirmed to Vedomosti that the amendments had been sent to the relevant departments, but refused to discuss them. Representatives of the FAS and the Ministry of Finance confirmed receipt of the amendments, the Central Bank did not comment on this, and it was not possible to contact a representative of the Ministry of Economic Development.

Not everyone likes the idea of the DIA: bankers, the Central Bank and some officials are against such differentiation of contributions.

Increase insurance to 1 million rubles. It’s been necessary for a long time and no one argues with this, but the differentiation of deductions is very controversial, says Elena Mozzhukhina, senior vice president of B&N Bank: “Banks that attract more deposits should deduct more. It's like car insurance: the more expensive the car, the more expensive the insurance. But at the same time, other indicators are also taken into account, sometimes very controversial. The system of contributions to the DIA must be transparent and understandable, so that the bank itself can calculate how much it will cost to increase deposits, and not wait for someone else to calculate it, including on the basis of qualitative assessments, which are often subjective.”

Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatiev spoke about the same thing on Wednesday (see inset). In his opinion, increasing the amount of insurance on deposits to 1 million rubles. can be “untied” from the new scheme for differentiating contributions, which should be as transparent as possible.

“We are against [this approach],” says an official who has read the DIA amendments. “So far we have not been able to receive proposals from the Central Bank on ranking banks according to these principles.” He considers the DIA’s proposals “theoretically correct,” but their “practical implementation is still 10 years away.” In his opinion, it will be possible to change the law in this way after the Central Bank develops implementation methods.

In the system of classifying banks into groups when admitting them to the deposit insurance system, “it is very clearly written out how everything is calculated,” DIA director Yuri Isaev convinced the bankers on Wednesday: “In principle, you don’t need to do anything except make a matrix: if you find yourself in such category, then you have such increased contributions.”

Investors are waiting for the insurance increase, which became known in the fall. According to the DIA, in 2012 the volume of deposits from 400,000 to 700,000 and from 700,000 to 1 million rubles grew the fastest (by 24.1%). But deposits over 1 million rubles, which were the leaders in the first half of the year (+11.2%), slowed down to 8.8% in the second.