Profitability and Efficiency of Russian Banks after Global Crisis

Kirill D. Shilov – Researcher of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (Moscow, Russia). E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Andrey V. Zubarev – Senior Researcher of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Candidate of Economic Sciences (Moscow, Russia). E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the performance of the Russian banking sector. Large banks have not only avoided serious financial losses in 2020, but also reached pre-crisis levels of return on equity by the end of 1st half of 2021. This was mainly due to operational efficiency increase and active retail lending. Smaller banks (outside the top twenty in terms of assets size) have been recovering relatively more slowly, and the revenue and profit of such banks shows a tendency of stagnation or even decline. All this speaks in favour of the worsening of the Russian banking sector concentration problem.

The article was written on the basis of the RANEPA state assignment research programme.

Key words: Russian banking system, profitability, efficiency, performance.

JEL-codes: G21, G28, E58, M41.