Over the past year, Rosgosstrakh has lost more than a third of its income in the insurance market. Now it is being absorbed by the Otkritie group, which can milk the former asset of oligarch Danil Khachaturov dry.
Immediately, market participants again started talking about the merger of Rosgosstrakh with Otkritie Bank, which has been discussed for more than a year and a half. Moreover, Otkritie immediately became more active and again began to actively raise the issue with Rosgosstrakh. As the media and experts have written more than once, in the event of a merger of two companies, this will be the largest transaction on the Russian insurance market. The assets of the state insurance company are a tasty morsel for any company, and for Otkritie first of all.
After all, the concept of “merger” in this situation is purely conditional. In fact, a more applicable definition is a bank's "takeover" of an insurance firm. What he has been trying to achieve for a long time and persistently. Rosgosstrakh has been persistent for a long time. Because this is a very tasty morsel for any business. The owner of Otkritie, Vadim Belyaev, talks about the desire to take over the insurance company as a breath of fresh air. And in the situation with his credit institution, this is indeed the case. Things are not looking great at Otkritie. Seemingly taller interest rates For some reason, clients are not very attracted to deposits. But if you get Rosgosstrakh with its enormous resources, then the total assets of the two structures will exceed 4 trillion rubles! Well, how can you not hit such a jackpot!
At the same time, most likely, the bank will also receive the most “delicious” asset of Rosgosstrakh - the RGS pension fund. It will truly be just a royal addition to the bank. After all, NFP’s clientele entrusted him with no less than almost 165 billion rubles. True, market participants cannot predict how effectively, and, most importantly, honestly and legally, Vadim Belyaev’s bank will dispose of the asset. And evil tongues are also saying that the pension fund will become the object of a secret deal between Belyaev and the head of Rosgosstrakh, Daniil Khachaturov.
But no one can even imagine what will happen to clients after such a transaction. pension fund. As practice shows, Otkritie does not treat them very carefully. By the way, such a topic as the transfer to the bank of the structure of Rosgosstrakh “RGS-real estate”, which holds on the balance sheet of almost 300 offices of the insurer in which its branches are located, is also being considered. There, too, the total cost is quite decent - almost 30 billion rubles. Belyaev, apparently, shouldn’t neglect that kind of money either.
Financial policy of Otkritie
All experts call the policy of Otkritie Bank nothing less than aggressive. Thus, the bank entered the top ten in the country in terms of its lending rates. They turned out to be higher than even those of such financial monsters as Alfa Bank. If the latter offered 8 percent per annum, then Belyaev announced almost 9 percent. In this situation, even Sberbank nervously smokes in the corner with its unfortunate 7%. Experts believe that these “enticements” are how Otkritie attracts customers. Only here is how the bank manages to fulfill its more than generous promises of payments. Financiers give one answer - this is done by attracting money from new investors. Does this remind you of anything? This reminds me of a banal financial pyramid. Which, as we know, ends sooner or later and leads to the collapse of both the bank itself and its clientele. The latest example is the Khanty-Mansiysk branch of Otkritie. Over the past year, its income fell more than 20 times, bringing the bank a loss of 21 billion rubles.
The net profit of the group's parent bank, Otkritie FC, fell more than six times over the same year, to 2.3 billion rubles. The first 9 months of 2016 corresponded to these dynamics. The net profit of the entire banking group during this period decreased by 1.7 times, to 3.605 billion rubles. Banking “menu” Why, against the backdrop of declining profits, does the Otkritie group continue to exist, and even among the top financial organizations in the country? It's simple, the bank feeds itself by absorbing other banks. In 2012, Belyaev’s Otkritie actually absorbed Nomos Bank. And this despite the fact that “Bank Otkritie, which accounts for about 70% of the assets of FC Otkritie, clearly has lower profitability and efficiency than Nomos Bank”
Moreover, a “pyramid-shaped” banking structure called Otkritie with assets of 240 billion rubles managed to acquire a bank with assets of 640 billion rubles.
The story with the Trust bank, which fell under the reorganization of Otkritie after a short “recovery” of Trust, is also memorable. Belyaev demanded from the state almost 50 billion rubles to plug financial “holes.” Only whose identity remains a mystery. “Trust” ultimately did not come out of the financial dive, and the allocated money apparently plugged the “holes” of Otkritie itself. The same thing happened with Petrocommerce Bank, absorbed by Vadim Belyaev.
In 2012, Petrocommerce Bank issued a loan of more than 2.5 billion rubles to the Zlatoust Metallurgical Plant. The money was transferred to ZMZ, and on the same day it was transferred to the Metallurg Trust company of the Mechel group. Then the round sum went straight to an offshore company called Masterking Trading Limited, associated with the bank, and from there again to Petrokommerts. As a result of the implementation of such a fraudulent scheme, the money never actually left Petrokommerts, but the plant suffered a huge financial gap, which largely led it to bankruptcy.
What is the result of this dubious work of Belyaev and his bank? And the fact that all reputable rating agencies even stopped including it in their reports. So that others do not fall into the financial networks of Otkritie. The truth is, Rosgosstrakh has every chance of this. But does he need it? Even in a very difficult economic situation. After all, the transition to Otkrytie will most likely become the closure of Russia’s largest insurer.
"RGS Bank", focusing on car enthusiasts, "optimized" branches in the country and fired hundreds of employees
The change in the business strategy of Rosgosstrakh Bank, announced back in April, is taking place against the backdrop of global restructuring. Having concentrated its work on car loans, the organization announced plans to enter the top 15 largest banks in the country. But so far everything is not going so smoothly: the company is closing its branches in Russian cities and dismissing employees. In Bashkiria, dismissed specialists are seeking reinstatement through the courts. Realnoe Vremya's correspondent looked into the situation.
Napoleonic strategyAfter Rosgosstrakh Bank joined the Otkritie group, the financial institution decided to change its business strategy. Otkritie owns 85% of Rosgosstrakh Bank, the rest of the share is also controlled by the structure of Mikhail Zadornov - through Rosgosstrakh. As conceived by the parent company, Rosgosstrakh Bank should be a separate bank, focused on working with motorists and auto business companies. This became known back in April. As Zadornov explained, RGS Bank has a good customer base - about 330 thousand in the country.
Otkritie is very optimistic about its “daughter”. According to the business strategy, which was reprinted by dozens of Russian information resources, to positive financial result The bank plans to exit by 2021. And by 2022, it should receive a net profit of 5.5 billion rubles. Assets will rise to 325 billion rubles (from 75 billion rubles in 2018). The number of active clients should exceed one million.
By the same year, Rosgosstrakh Bank intends to become one of the 15 largest Russian lenders (with a market share of 2%). At the same time, the bank wants to occupy 10% of the car lending market, becoming a leader in this sector. According to the Otkritie press center, by this date the loan portfolios of RGS Bank will also increase: retail - up to 228 billion rubles (from 3.5 billion rubles in 2018), corporate - up to 48 billion rubles (from 0.4 billion rubles).
According to Otkritie Chairman of the Board Mikhail Zadornov, he expects the car sales market to recover to pre-crisis levels in 2022 (up to 8.8 million cars). At the same time, Rosgosstrakh Bank intends to focus its activities on the development of a partner network of branches without cash desks. Automakers, distributors, dealers and service companies will be offered individual credit and savings products, convenient remote banking, cash settlement services, acquiring, etc. Rosgosstrakh Bank experts predict that 0.9 million cars will be sold on credit in 2019, and in 2022 - 1.3 million. The market portfolio of car loans will amount to 0.9 trillion rubles in 2019 and 1 trillion rubles in 2022. The share of used cars in the total volume of car loans will also increase: penetration into total sales will increase to 7% (from the current 4%).
The tricky word “optimization”How is this strategy implemented in life? In reality, everything turned out to be not so rosy. As Realnoe Vremya learned, RGS Bank began cutting back dozens of additional and operational offices across the country in April (according to some information, about 80). In particular, in Bashkiria, several branches in Ufa, as well as in the cities of Ishimbay, Beloretsk, Kumertau, Tuymazy, Dyurtyuli, Belebey, Meleuz and in the village of Priyutovo, were subject to “optimization”.
By phone " hotline The bank confirmed to Realnoe Vremya's correspondent that its offices in Bashkiria were closed.
At the moment, there are no branches or ATMs in these cities, the bank confirmed. - They have been transferred to a remote service format (that is, they do not accept clients). The network development business model has been revised to improve its efficiency. And in this case, the closure of some branches, unfortunately, is inevitable.
At the same time, RGS Bank emphasized that the development plan involves not only closing “redundant” ones, but also opening new points of sale. However, the organization found it difficult to say when and where new offices would open.
Now the Ufa branch of Rosgosstrakh Bank has only additional offices in Ufa (Kremlevskoe branch), Sterlitamak and Neftekamsk. The branch currently has operational offices in the capitals of four republics of the Volga Federal District - in Bashkortostan (Ufa), Tatarstan (Kazan), Mari El (Yoshkar-Ola) and Chuvashia (Cheboksary).
Several fired workers felt they had been treated unfairly and wrote statement of claim to the prosecutor's office. Photo upprb.bashkortostan.ru “We are no longer needed” In fact, the decision to close the offices was made back in February at a meeting of the bank’s board of directors. The corresponding order was sent to the departments, the heads of whose branches “took the spotlight.” And hundreds of specialists lost their jobs, and clients in small towns lost their cash registers and ATMs.
In particular, the bank branch in Belebey has been closed since April 15. Several dismissed workers felt that they had been treated unfairly and filed a claim with the prosecutor's office. They demand that Rosgosstrakh Bank reinstate them and recognize their dismissal as illegal.
The offices were closed, we were no longer needed,” one of the plaintiffs told our correspondent. - We believe that we were offended. We demand that we be reinstated and transferred, for example, to Ufa, if the department in Belebey was closed.
“We don’t need to reduce branches”Realnoe Vremya sent a request to the press services of Rosgosstrakh Bank and Otkritie with a request to comment on the latest changes in the structure of the organization. The head of communications at Rosgosstrakh Bank, Ekaterina Cherkasova, said that the answer is already ready. But her superiors asked to send a return letter only after a few weeks.
“We have changed our strategy and are actively engaged in debugging business processes,” Cherkasova told us. - But we are not ready to talk in detail yet. The transformation of offices occurs, rather, not in quantity, but in quality. If a branch closes somewhere, it will open somewhere nearby in a different format. But we don’t need to cut branches.
If closures occur somewhere, this is only a transformation of quality,” Realnoe Vremya’s interlocutor emphasized.
Not from a good lifeAt the same time, the head of the analytical department of BKF, Maxim Osadchiy, considers the reduction of offices and employees of RGS Bank a forced measure due to far from happy indicators.
“The bank is far from being in great shape; it is consistently unprofitable,” the expert notes. - Loss after tax for the first half of 2019 amounted to 452.1 million rubles, for 2018 - 5.7 billion rubles, for 2017 - 446.3 million rubles. The bank is reducing personnel costs: if in the first half of 2018 they amounted to 1,158.3 million rubles, then in the first half of 2019 they decreased to 1,073.0 million rubles. As for the bank's focus on car enthusiasts and the auto business, in order to achieve the stated indicators, the company, in his opinion, must work hard with one or more factories that produce vehicles.
Successful entry into the car loan segment is possible provided there is a close relationship with the car manufacturer, Osadchiy emphasizes. - RN Bank (the bank of the Renault - Nissan - Mitsubishi Alliance), Volkswagen Bank RUS and other subsidiaries of automakers have such natural connections.
Timur Rakhmatullin
Experts note that such a merger has great potential - Otkritie, which is one of the leaders in the Russian financial market, lacked its own insurance business, and the merger will help Rosgosstrakh to further strengthen its position, including through the introduction of innovative technologies .
News of the company merger caused quite a stir in financial circles last week. And this is not surprising, because a deal of this scale is a rare occurrence in an industry where spheres of influence, clients and regions have long been divided between the main players. And the cases when some of the leading corporations in their segments unite can be counted on one hand.
Goal number one
Information that the companies are preparing to merge assets appeared in the federal press last week - although sources familiar with the situation claim that negotiations continued for at least six months, starting in the summer. It was reported, in particular, that recently shareholders Danil Khachaturov (Rosgosstrakh) and Vadim Belyaev (Otkritie) presented a merger plan to the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina - after all, it is the regulator who will have to approve the creation of a new player. Vadim Belyaev will become the main shareholder of the combined structure, Danil Khachaturov will receive a minority stake.
It is known that the assets of the combined group will exceed 4 trillion rubles, the customer base will be 50 million people, and the number of sales points will be about 4 thousand. At the same time, the total number of company employees after the merger will be about 100 thousand people. Such indicators are quite comparable with the largest state-owned banks in the country. Of course, this is not yet Sberbank of Russia, where 330 thousand people work. But now in the country’s second largest state bank, VTB, for example, the number of employees is the same 100 thousand people. And the assets of one of the largest state banks - Rosselkhozbank - are 2.76 trillion rubles. It is also important that today, against the backdrop of the discussed changes in the legislation on compulsory motor liability insurance, the prospects for players in the insurance market, who have experienced some pressure, look quite positive.
Without a doubt, this will be a worthy player, comparable in size of assets and number of clients to the largest market participants, including state-owned ones, states Doctor of Economic Sciences, Professor Nikita Krichevsky. Both the state and people are interested in improving the reliability and quality of service financial services. I believe that this merger will play a positive role in the area of improving quality. The domestic financial market needs a certain foundation, a certain basis, which cannot only be state-owned, it must also include private structures. And in this case we are dealing with a merger that forms such a new dominant.
Chief analyst of Promsvyazbank Dmitry Monastyrshin agrees with this assessment.
Such a large player will create competition for government agencies. The situation now is this: Sberbank has a large network of branches, VTB, in turn, is implementing a large-scale project with Russian Post, creating Post Bank and significantly strengthening its presence in retail. And now Otkritie, together with Rosgosstrakh, will significantly strengthen their retail potential. Rosgosstrakh has a large number of branches, more than 3,000 offices - this time, the second - about 65,000 agents who themselves will become clients of Otkritie and will be able to sell not only insurance products, but also advise on banking products. And most importantly, Rosgosstrakh has about 43 million clients, this is the widest base among insurance companies, the expert recalled.
At the moment, both companies occupy leading positions in their markets: Otkritie - in the banking, investment and brokerage sectors and in the field of asset management, Rosgosstrakh - in insurance. At the same time, Otkritie has long lacked its own insurance business in order to provide a wider range of financial services. The company even made unsuccessful attempts to develop its insurance division, but in this highly competitive segment, creating a truly significant player from scratch today is very problematic. A merger with the leader of the insurance market effectively solves this issue.
In turn, Rosgosstrakh has long tried to build its own banking business. For this purpose, a separate structure was created - the universal Rosgosstrakh Bank, which provides banking services to individuals and corporate clients. Now, thanks to the merger with Otkritie, the problem of developing the banking business will be solved at a fundamentally different level.
Professor Nikita Krichevsky is confident that the merger will benefit both participants.
For the bank, this means expanding its client base and new products that will be developed jointly with insurers. As for insurers, these are again new services developed jointly with the bank, and additional guarantees that clients of both Otkritie and Rosgosstrakh will receive,” the expert said.
Krichevsky also draws attention to the possibility of easier entry of insurers into the stock market and the release of joint products with a division of Otkritie Bank operating in the market securities.
Like in the best financial houses in the world
Thus, the merger of Otkritie and Rosgosstrakh is a natural and logical solution for both companies. The deal will allow them to make a leap in development and achieve results in a short time that each of the companies would have spent years achieving separately.
The combination of companies creates the potential for further business growth, increasing efficiency and reducing costs by managing a single customer base, developing common marketing channels and creating synergies in other areas, notes a source familiar with the negotiations.
The new structure will have a fairly strong position, and, most likely, due to this they will be able to attract customers and take away share from competitors. By competitors, I mean small and medium-sized insurance companies and regional banks. Maybe they will be able to take away some of the clients from state banks, confirms Monastyrshin.
Practice recent years shows that in the current economic conditions only the strongest players are successful. There are two options to become one - either grow independently (so-called organic growth), or join forces with other market participants. And in this sense, both companies are following the beaten path: growth through consolidation at the expense of competitors and companies of related profiles, through mergers - a long-established global trend.
Thus, in Europe, the formation of “full cycle” multifunctional financial corporations began many years ago and has long proven its effectiveness. Nowadays there are many companies operating there that are successfully engaged in simultaneously lending, insurance and providing many other financial services in which individual firms previously specialized.
It is this comprehensive approach that is professed by Societe Generale, a famous French financial conglomerate, one of the largest in Europe. The company provides banking services to individuals and legal entities, provides investment and brokerage services, manages assets, and also engages in different types insurance, trade finance and even car rental.
Another example is the British financial holding Lloyds Banking Group, which was formed in 2009 with the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS banks. Like its French competitor, it operates in various areas of the financial market, providing banking and insurance services to individuals and large companies.
All three of the above European groups have assets in the trillions of euros, and their annual profits amount to billions of euros. This is largely the result wide range services they provide - insurance alone brought Societe Generale net €337 million last year. And, again, active mergers and acquisitions helped both structures take leading global positions - without them, completely different organizations could have ended up on the lists of leaders.
Bigger, better, stronger
As a result of the merger, Otkritie will gain access to a large number new clients and the widest regional network of Rosgosstrakh, Rosgosstrakh is not only a long-awaited full-fledged entry into the banking market, but also cost reduction and process optimization, including through advanced digital technologies and developments of Otkritie, which in recent years For two years, it has made a real breakthrough in building a digital business and high-tech services for different categories of clients. And, of course, as part of the merged company, Rosgosstrakh will receive additional support in the form of a new investor, which should allow it to become even larger.
This could also be facilitated by early approval. State Duma in three readings of a package of amendments to the Law on Compulsory Motor Liability Insurance (primarily the amendment on in-kind compensation for damage), which should put a barrier to car lawyers and stabilize the situation in compulsory car insurance: companies will stop suffering losses, and clients are guaranteed to receive the main thing for which insurance is needed - high-quality refurbished car.
Experts say that the merger of two such large companies as Otkritie and Rosgosstrakh will take some time - according to calculations, this will take the entire next year. It is expected that in the merged company the Otkritie team, as before, will develop banking, investment and brokerage businesses, as well as asset management. In turn, the Rosgosstrakh team will manage the insurance business. That is, everyone will do what they are an expert in.
And the biggest winners will be the clients who will have access to all financial products “in one window” - the so-called “financial supermarket”. There are also no plans to abandon any of the brands - each of them will remain with the corresponding business segment.
Plus, this will be a player too big to ignore. If today you can neglect, say, the interests of an individual bank or individual insurers, or even more so stock brokers, then tomorrow it will be much more difficult to do this, because a very powerful structure will appear, which, like it or not, will have to be taken into account, adds Nikita Krichevsky.
It is obvious that the merger of the two companies will benefit not only themselves, but also the Russian financial sector as a whole. After all, the emergence of such a large private player will increase real competition and may significantly change the balance of power in the financial market. This means that ultimately the consumer wins, for whom they will now fight even more actively than before.
Financial assistance in solving the problems of Rosgosstrakh insurance company put the Otkritie FC group in a dangerous position even before the official purchase of the insurance organization. First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Dmitry Tulin told reporters about this. According to him, FC Otkritie Bank actually began financing the current activities of Rosgosstrakh at the end of last year.
The decision of the owners of FC Otkritie to buy Rosgosstrakh became known in December 2016.
“The company was experiencing certain financial difficulties at that time, so it was a convenient target for takeover. De facto, the bank began to finance its activities by providing loans. The bank's actual costs for financing these activities far exceeded the initial expectations of the group's owners; the bank spent a fair amount of liquidity for these purposes, although this was not a fatal step for it. The problem was that they solved the financial problems of Rosgosstrakh, but they put themselves in a very vulnerable position,” TASS quotes D. Tulin as saying.
The Central Bank representative added that, although the financing of Rosgosstrakh was not the only reason for the bank’s current catastrophic situation, it became a kind of trigger that “served as a catalyst for the process and brought this event closer.”
Let us recall that on August 29, 2017, the Bank of Russia decided to sanitize FC Otkritie. A temporary administration has been appointed to the credit institution, which includes employees of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and UK FCBS LLC, as reported on the regulator’s website. From the press release of the Central Bank it became known that PJSC IC Rosgosstrakh is part of the bank group, where a temporary administration has now been appointed.
At the end of the first half of 2017, the loss of Rosgosstrakh amounted to 20.9 billion rubles, which is 52% higher than the same figure in 2016. At the end of last year, the insurance organization recorded a loss of 33.3 billion rubles. According to the forecast of the rating agency S&P Global Ratings, Rosgosstrakh will also face losses based on the results of 2017. The company’s further “financial prospects remain uncertain.” According to calculations by agency experts, Otkritie FC financed the insurer with at least 40 billion rubles.
“Financial organizations and specialized services included in the Bank group, including PJSC Insurance company Rosgosstrakh, PJSC National Bank TRUST, PJSC Rosgosstrakh Bank, JSC NPF Lukoil-Garant, JSC NPF Electric Energy, JSC NPF RGS, JSC Otkritie Broker, as well as Tochka and Rocketbank will continue to operate as normal and serve clients,” the Bank of Russia said in a press release.
FYI
FC Otkritie Bank, founded in 1992, is a systemically important credit institution and ranks eighth in terms of assets. The bank's infrastructure includes 22 branches and more than 400 internal structural divisions.