Rosbank spoke about the possibility of sending transfers in yuan

Rosbank lost part of the correspondent accounts opened in banks of friendly countries in local currency after falling under sanctions. This was announced at a briefing on the results of the disclosure of the financial results of the bank by its chairman of the board Natalia Voevodina.

“There were certain nostro accounts [in friendly currencies] that we lost after being included in the sanctions. it is no secret that the players are afraid of secondary sanctions and we are a difficult partner for them, so we have lost some partners,” Voevodina said. She clarified that correspondent relations with Rosbank were interrupted by individual credit organizations. “We are updating the list of currencies. We can no longer make dirhams, but there are no lira yet,” Voevodina answered the question about payments in the currencies of countries that do not belong to the neighboring countries. Rosbank has been under blocking US sanctions since last December , and since last February it has been under EU sanctions.

In general, according to Voevodina, the bank has not lost the ability to make payments in some currencies; clients engaged in foreign economic activity retain the possibility of settlements. “In yuan, we are good enough,” she gave an example. Rosbank sought to open as many correspondent accounts as possible last summer and autumn and built relationships with correspondent banks in such a way as not to exchange information about transactions through the SWIFT international financial messaging system in case of disconnection from this system, Voevodina noted: “Our scenario suggests that we could and still can be disconnected from SWIFT, so we opened more than one nostro account for each currency.

How sanctions hit international transfers

Earlier, Rosbank Vice President Alexander Rakhmanin said that due to sanctions and the shutdown of SWIFT, Russian business is experiencing significant difficulties when working with banks from friendly CHINA , Turkey and other countries. “Russian business, especially those involved in foreign economic activity, has a slightly erroneous impression that, roughly speaking, the Chinese banking system and the Chinese corporate sector will almost stand in line for how to help the Russians. But in fact, after February 24 (the day the Russian special military operation in Ukraine began. -) we faced what we faced, ”he said.

Vojvodina clarified on March 21 that a sufficient number of payment routes within mainland China are now available for the bank. “We cannot pay in yuan somewhere in Taiwan, this is impossible for a bank with a sanctioned status. But again, there can be different correspondent banks in the yuan payment chain, and each has its own compliance policy. In fact, this chain has to be adjusted to the client's profile. According to payment statistics, if we take how many payments are not made per day (value to day) and they get stuck somewhere, these are not indicators that say that there are systemic problems now. There is a rather low level of payments “under investigation,” she said.

“One must generally understand that there will be no such calculations as they were before in any currency. As fast and as cheap as ever. Now the question of finding the right payment route, the selection of a correspondent chain is the talk of the day,” Voevodina said.

In an interview with RBC last December, she also drew attention to the fact that transfers in dollars and euros would no longer go as quickly and with such ease as before, so the bank began to build correspondent relations with eastern countries. “Now we have probably the widest palette of correspondent accounts in soft currencies on the market. Dollars and euros have now become toxic and costly to store, so please, there are alternative currencies, choose,” she replied (the conversation took place even before Rosbank fell under US sanctions in December).

Transfers in yuan are also carried out by the largest banks under sanctions - Sberbank and VTB. Sberbank suspended them at the beginning of June 2022, but already on June 17, the HEAD of the bank, German Gref, announced that the bank had restored settlements in yuan for all categories of customers. At the same time, in September, a representative of a credit institution told RBC that Sberbank did not have transfers in yuan for individuals. In the fall of 2022, VTB launched yuan transfers for individuals bypassing SWIFT (the bank did not disclose the details of the scheme).