OREANDA-NEWS  By May 1, 2023, the Russian Central Bank will dismiss a thousand employees from the staff of the central office, separate orders for cuts have been lowered to regional divisions. Kommersant writes about this with reference to sources close to the regulator.

According to the interlocutors of the publication, we are talking only about the first wave of cuts, the second is scheduled for autumn. They are sure that the reason for such personnel decisions was savings on employees, since at the same time the Central Bank canceled financial assistance, which was paid for vacation and amounted to two monthly salaries.

The regulator claims that they started optimizing the staff several years ago, and since 2015 the number has fallen by 30 percent. However, if we take into account the reports of the Central Bank, there have not been such large-scale cuts for a long time. So, in 2021, the number of staff decreased by 300 people, to about 49 thousand.

Another source familiar with the situation believes that the current reduction is not least related to the search for funds to create units in the new territories of Russia, that is, in the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

Market participants believe that significant changes in the work of the Bank of Russia are not expected, and the quality of supervision will not deteriorate. The fact is that there are fewer and fewer banks, they are getting bigger, there are no new financial organizations, and the volume of funds flow has significantly decreased for a number of operations. In addition, due to Western sanctions, people are no longer needed to control currency transactions and securities, foreign correspondent accounts.

Last weekend, the European Union imposed the tenth package of sanctions against Russia. Rosbank, Tinkoff Bank and Alfa-Bank, which had previously avoided them, fell under restrictive measures. Thus, now the sanctions apply to all Russian systemically important banks.