By Andrei Skvarsky
TransCreditBank, a bank controlled by state rail transport monopoly Russian Railways, is setting up a full-service retailing division and has hired four ex-top managers of the Russian Standard bank to run the unit.
TransCredit Bank focusses on services for corporate clients, while for most of its current two million personal customers it is mainly an institution via which they are paid their wages. Less than 1% of them borrow from the bank, according to Russian business daily Kommersant.
A strategy launched by Yury Novozhilov, who became TransCredit Bank president last autumn, involves organising a versatile retailing service. “Within the next three years the bank should join the top ten leaders in retail banking in all principal respects, and we expect to double our retail loan portfolio by 2013,” Novozhilov said.
Three of the four newcomers were vice-presidents at Russian Standard, a bank Novozhilov credits with being “a splendid school” for personal lending techniques.
TransCreditBank has recently been undergoing a series of internal reforms in which, among other things, it has bought out four regional subsidiaries, has set up an investment company called TKB Capital with offices in Britain, Cyprus and Estonia as well as in Russia, and has taken over investment bank KIT Finance, one of the first Russian victims of the financial crisis.
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