MOSCOW, December 12, 23:45 /ITAR-TASS/. Global Trade Review (GTR) magazine has named Sberbank the best trade finance bank in CIS for the second year in a row.
GTR is the world’s leading independent and the most reputable magazine in cross-border trade and trade finance business. Sberbank is the only Russian bank that has received such a reputable award, with previous winners including HSBC, CitiBank, Commerzbank, BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered.
According to Andrei Ivanov, Global Head of Trade Finance and Correspondent Banking of Sberbank, the trade financing portfolio of the bank has increased from 2 billion U.S. dollars to 12.5 billion U.S. dollars over the past three years. “The bank is doing everything possible to not only maintain its leading position in Russia and CIS, but also to enter the top 10 European banks by 2018 - the trade financing market leaders - by increasing the portfolio of its transactions to 30 billion U.S. dollars,” Ivanov said.
Sberbank offers a full range of trade financing and documentary business products, based on the best international standards. At the same time the products on offer are being diversified rapidly and the new trade financing business areas are developing. Already during this year the first financing transactions insured by the Russian Agency for Export Credit and Investment Insurance (EXIAR) and transactions in the field of aviation financing have been closed.
Through the development of an international network Sberbank is actively implementing intra-group transactions involving foreign subsidiaries of the banks of Sberbank Group in the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey. In 2013 a new product line - Commodity Trade Finance (CTF) and Supply Chain Finance - was launched based on a platform of Sberbank (Switzerland) AG covering the financing of export flows from the Russian Federation, including trade operations financing products after crossing the border.
Sberbank plans to build an effective cross-border platform in order to offer its customers the most flexible integrated solutions for trade flow servicing.
“Given the successfully implemented strategy of international expansion and the expected synergies from the geographical expansion of the Group in the coming years, Sberbank will definitely take a significant share of the international trade financing market,” Ivanov said.
Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank and a leading global financial institution. Sberbank holds almost one third of aggregate Russian banking sector assets, it is the key lender to the national economy and the biggest deposit taker in Russia. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation is the founder and principal shareholder of Sberbank owning 50 percent of the Bank’s authorised capital plus one voting share, with the remaining 50 percent held by domestic and international investors. Sberbank has more than 110 million individual customers and one million corporate clients in 20 countries. Sberbank has the largest distribution network in Russia with more than 18,000 branches, and its international operations include Great Britain, the United States, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and other countries.