The volume of corporate loans granted by foreign-owned Russian banks has shrunk significantly since February 2022, down by a total of RUB870bn ($9.8bn), Kommersant daily estimates. In some foreign-owned banks the corporate portfolio has dropped to zero. 

As covered by bne IntelliNews, major foreign lenders such as Austria's Raiffeisenbank, Italy's UniCredit and Citi of the US are among dozens of banks from “unfriendly” countries that remain unable to exit the Russian market due to the special decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin prohibiting any such deals without the special approval of the authorities.

Notably, in 2022 the foreign banks posted an aggregate net profit of RUB211bn ($2.7bn), beating the market, but the pressure to scale down their activities grew at the beginning of 2023.

The largest player with foreign capital in terms of assets – Raiffeisenbank – over the period under review reduced the corporate lending portfolio by more than 50%, to RUB295bn, down from 9th to 14th place among all Russian banks.

Unnamed sources told Kommersant that the parent Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) has sharply reduced the limit for a subsidiary bank to grow assets in Russia. As a result, Raiffeisenbank stopped opening accounts for new corporate clients in March 2023. 

UniCredit Bank's second-largest corporate portfolio has shrunk by 43% to RUB271bn. Citibank, which was in the third position, has also sharply cut its corporate loans portfolio.  Smaller credit institutions, such as Intesa, Mizuho Bank and OTP Bank, have had their corporate portfolios reduced by 50-75%, and Natixis Bank has simply zeroed them out. 

Meanwhile, the largest Russian banks predominantly demonstrated growth in their corporate loan portfolios. Alfa Bank (up 12%) attributed the situation to the increase in lending to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). Sovcombank (up 16%) has intensified lending to the machine-building sector.