OREANDA-NEWS. The Bank of Moscow has summed up the first six months of operation in 2013 in the small and medium size business segment. As of 1 July 2013 in the small and medium size business segment the Bank has moved ahead of the goals defined by its strategy. Thus since the beginning of the year the SMB credit portfolio has increased by 24 billion RUR hitting the mark of 113 billion RUR. This demonstrates a 28% growth while the growth rate of the Russian market over the same period was 5.6%.

This said, it should be noted that the share of overdue debts in the SMB credit portfolio has gone down from 24% prior to the incorporation of the Bank of Moscow in the VTB Group to 7% as of 1 July 2013.

The growth of the SMB guarantee portfolio by 11.4 billion RUR (up to 26.8 billion RUR), which materially exceeds the planned growth rate, should be noted as a positive result of the first six months of 2013.

The first six months of 2013 has shown that the volume of the resources attracted from the SMB clients has grown by 12% to 111 billion RUR. This accounts for an 11 billion RUR increase which is over 9 times higher than the increase attained over the same period of the last year while the attracted resource market has grown by 9.4%.

One of the priorities in the SMB sector is the work with regional municipalities. The Bank of Moscow is becoming a partner in the development of the regions and cities of the Russian Federation. In June 2013 a separate structure was formed to work in this direction thus assuring a more efficient interaction between the clients and the Bank.

During the first six months of 2013, within the framework of agreements with the RF authorities, decisions were made to finance various regional projects to the total of over 8 billion RUR. The Bank provided funds for road repairs and construction of kindergartens in Nizhny Novgorod, for the implementation of projects in the sphere of road infrastructure and communal service modernisation in Krasnodar, for the installation of meters in apartment blocks in Volgograd, and for the performance of work aimed at servicing the heat supply lines in Ufa, etc.

The Bank of Moscow actively works in the sphere of government contracts and develops its co-operation with the Unified Electronic Trading Facility. Thus the results of the first six months of 2013 show that the volume of the tranches extended to pay retainers in government contract auctions amounts to 1.4 billion RUR which is 300 million RUR more than the amount of tranches extended in 2012. Thus during the first six months of 2013 the Bank financed the potential volume of government contracts to the amount of over 16 billion RUR. As of 1 July 2013 the Unified Electronic Trading Facility credit portfolio has almost doubled up to 300 million RUR as compared with the beginning of the year. Among such credits the share of the Moscow region is 56% while the 44% balance of the credited funds is represented in the branch network of the Bank of Moscow.

"We positively view the results of our operation in the first six months of 2013. The Bank of Moscow shows dynamics of its work with SMB clients. We actively develop co-operation with small and medium size businesses using our advantage of being s state bank with a flexible approach to making decisions and a high quality of services provided to corporate clients," commented Vladimir Voyeikov, Member of the Board of the Bank of Moscow.

Now attempts are made by the Bank to cut down the time for making decisions on SMB clients’ applications for loans, and to simplify the process of extending bank guarantees. In 2013, within the framework of its interaction with SMB clients, the Bank of Moscow will continue developing the micro-credit direction planning to update the scoring product extending process including developing of a separate model for sales in this direction. New credit products, such as Commercial Mortgage Loan, Government Contract Financing and others are being developed.