This text is an automatic translation from Русский. It was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Read original →Financial Hunting Season: How Banks Are Holding Onto Depositors
Why banks have returned to raising deposit rates after their rate-cutting strategy failed. How the new law insuring deposits up to 2.8 million rubles will reshape the market. Where Russians are moving their money in search of better terms.
From Rate Cuts to a New Battle for Depositors
Back in April 2025, banks began cutting rates on savings accounts despite the Central Bank maintaining its key rate at 21%. VTB reduced the yield on its "VTB-Account" to 19% per annum (down from 23%). Sberbank lowered its savings account rate to 18% from 22%, while T-Bank and Rosselkhozbank cut their maximum rates to 19% and 19.5% per annum respectively. At the time, banks were anticipating an easing of monetary policy.
In June, the Central Bank lowered the rate by 1 percentage point (to 20%), with the next move coming only in August—down to 18%. So ahead of the Central Bank's September meeting, banks uniformly continued cutting rates, expecting the regulator to lower the key rate by more than 2 percentage points. However, on September 12, the regulator decided to cut the key rate by just 1 percentage point, to 17%, and the inflow of Russian citizens' funds into bank deposits declined. In September this year, the volume of new deposits fell roughly 22-fold (to 33 billion rubles) compared to July (752 billion rubles).
Realizing that their actions weren't aligned with Central Bank policy, banks reversed course and began raising deposit rates again. Today, short-term promotional deposits are once again reaching 16–17% per annum. For example, VTB raised its ceiling rate on long-term deposits to 15%, Dom.RF increased rates on three-month deposits to 17% per annum, and Absolut now offers 15% for six months and 13.5% for a year. This synchronized rate increase by banks is a tactical response to the failure of their previous strategy.
Money in Motion: Depositors Choose Rates, Not Banks
The sharp rise in attractive offers from banks gave depositors more choice. As a result, several banks saw a slight decline in their deposit portfolios in September: VTB's deposit volume decreased by 1.2%, Sovcombank's by 2.8%, and Gazprombank's by 0.8%. However, this doesn't mean people are pulling their money out of banks—they're seeking better terms. For instance, Alfa-Bank saw deposit growth of +4%, while Dom.RF posted +1.9%.
