All news

Ten representative offices of foreign banks shut operations in Russia in 2022 — regulator

Currently, there are 28 representative offices of foreign banks officially operating in Russia

MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/. Four representative offices of foreign banks ceased operations in Russia in November-December 2022. In total, ten foreign representative offices were closed in 2022, according to files provided by the Bank of Russia.

According to the regulator, three representative offices of foreign banks located in different cities refused accreditation in November 2022, and one more representative office in December.

The press service of the Bank of Russia told TASS that exclusion from the register was voluntary.

"Procedures for terminating accreditation were carried out on the basis of petitions of banks that opened representative offices," a spokesman with the regulator said.

In total, since the beginning of the year, the regulator has excluded ten foreign representative offices from the register.

Among those who left Russia are representative offices of the French CIC bank, the Cypriot Hellenic Bank and two German banking groups, Helaba and KfW IPEX Bank.

According to the Bank of Russia, only three representative offices were closed in 2021, and one in 2020. Currently, there are 28 representative offices of foreign banks officially operating in Russia. In 2016 there were 65 of them.

A representative office of a bank is not entitled to carry out banking operations. It is its separate subdivision, outside the location of the credit institution. It represents the bank’s interests and protects them.