Fitch Ratings upgraded the outlook for ratings of Russian banks Sovcombank and Tinkoff from negative to stable, the international rating agency said.
Fitch also confirmed “B+” ratings of banks.
The revision of outlooks reflects profitable performance of both banks “despite larger credit losses and higher funding costs,” Fitch said.
Fitch expects Sovcombank and Tinkoff Bank will “remain profitable even in case of further moderate deterioration of asset quality,” the rating agency reported.
“Massive crisis” in Russia’s banking sector
Chief Executive Officer of Russia’s top lender Sberbank said Russia is facing a massive crisis, adding that next year will not be simple for Russia’s banking either. According to Gref, the financial recovery procedure will take another several years due to tightened requirements to capital and from the viewpoint of introducing state-of-the-art technologies, transparency and risk management.
This view was not shared by the First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Alexey Simanovskiy who said there are no signs of banking crisis in Russia. According to Simanovskiy, “it’s not a crisis but a challenging working situation similar to the one some time ago.” “Hard evidence says that the situation is slowly getting better. There is evidence highlighting economic improvement, though weak and hardly visible,” First Deputy Chairman said.