OREANDA-NEWS. February 06, 2014. Sviaz-Bank has been named among leading banks issuing mortgage loans to the Russian public. A statement to this effect was made, in particular, by First Vice Premier Igor Shuvalov at a meeting held in President Vladimir Putin’s office with Government members.

According to Igor Shuvalov, 800,000 mortgage loans valued at 1 trillion 300 billion rubles were made in Russia in 2013. The first vice premier made special mention of VTB 24, Gazprombank, Deltacredit Bank, Rosbank, Sviaz-Bank, Raiffeisenbank, and Khanti-Mansi Bank.

Out of this countrywide total, Sviaz-Bank gave more than 17.9 billion rubles in over 8,800 mortgage loans in 2013.

At the end of 2013, Sviaz-Bank controlled nearly 18% of the military mortgage market in Russia: by late 2013, Sviaz-Bank’s mortgage portfolio under the Military Mortgage program topped 21 billion rubles, almost 3 billion of which was issued in the fourth quarter of 2013 (placing Sviaz-Bank third in the estimates of the Military Mortgage Federal State Lending Institution). President Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Dmitriev, Chairman of Vnesheconombank, who met in April 2013, had words of praise for Sviaz-Bank’s performance in the mortgage market, and Vladimir Dmitriev said that Sviaz-Bank was the unrivaled leader in mortgage lending to armed forces servicemen.

In 2013, Sviaz-Bank launched several innovative new loan products that had a beneficial impact on the growth of its loan portfolio and reinforced its positions on the retail market. In the first quarter of last year, Sviaz-Bank started issuing mortgages to servicemen for the purchase of apartments in new housing projects, and in the second quarter, it resumed issuing big loans against the security of residential and commercial real property, and registered a significant increase in the number of development companies that were the Bank’s partners under the New Home mortgage program in Moscow and other regions across Russia. The Bank also cut interest rates it charges under mortgage programs for the purchase of housing in the primary and secondary markets.