Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is currently actively driving customers away from its Russian subsidiary with a ‘zero interest rate policy’. Swedish Russia expert Anders Aslund reported this on Thursday during a lecture in Vienna. However, the success is moderate.
Aslund referred to circles close to the bank, which he believes “has a huge problem in Moscow.” “They can’t get their money out.” In other words, their profits remain stuck in Russia.
The Russians don’t trust Putin
“They used to have four million customers (in Russia), and now they have stopped paying interest. But that only reduced the number of customers by a million, because people still prefer to give their money to Raiffeisen than to Putin’s banks,” said the former Swedish ambassador to Moscow, considered an expert on Russian financial system.
He advised former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, among others, and later also worked as a leader in Ukrainian companies.
RBI spokesperson: Interest rate of two percent
When asked by APA, an RBI spokesperson declined to immediately comment on Aslund’s statements, but said Raiffeisenbank Russia’s retail deposit rate is currently two percent. The interest rate on savings accounts is six percent. The Russian policy interest rate currently stands at 16 percent.
During his lecture at the Austria Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES), Aslund also reported that a significant portion of RBI’s profits go to the Russian subsidiary. But the RBI “couldn’t get this money out”. The expert does not believe that anything will change. Russia is also likely to seize the RBI subsidiary “as they have already done with one company after another.”
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
