Chief Financial Officer, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Alfa-Bank Alexei Chukhlov, speaking at a conference call for the media on financial reporting, said that Alfa-Bank had reached record growth rates in 2021.
Alfa-Bank's net profit in 2021 turned out to be 20% higher than in 2020, exceeding $1.61 billion. Capital increased by 22% (from $8.7 billion to $10.6 billion), and the return on equity (ROE), according to reports under IFRS, increased from 16% to 16.7%.
Chukhlov noted that Alfa-Bank has moved into "international heavyweights", becoming the largest private and most profitable bank in Russia.
“There are only a few dozen private banks with a capital of $10 billion in the world,” he said.
According to Vladimir Verkhoshinsky, Chief Executive Officer of Alfa-Bank, Alfa-Bank not only fulfilled the previous strategy ahead of schedule, but also “took on a new super-ambition”.
“We chose the path of “financial superservice” and focused on understanding the needs of clients in the best possible way. A year has passed and the results speak for themselves. We have grown our retail customer base by 4 million to 22 million. The volume of the customer base of small and medium-sized businesses for the first time exceeded 1 million customers. The number of clients in the brokerage business has quadrupled,” Verkhoshinsky said.
It is worth noting that Alfa-Bank continued the extensive growth of the Phytigal branch network. Now there are more than 130 of them across the country. Each new such department saves 10 tons of paper per year.
“Finally, this year we have become the undisputed leader in digitalization in Russia, having won all the first positions in the Markswebb rating — the best mobile bank, the best digital office, the best online bank for medium and small businesses,” Chukhlov emphasized.
Alfa-Bank's top manager added that the group's retail loan portfolio increased by 47.5% last year and amounted to $17.3 billion, while its share in the retail lending market increased to 5.1%.
“We hold a confident third place in Russia in the retail lending market, third in terms of mortgage portfolio, and third in terms of the amount of funds raised from individuals. Moreover, against the background of such active growth, we maintain high performance indicators,” he said.
Recall that in 2021 Alfa-Bank became the only Russian private bank to receive investment ratings from Fitch and S&P. Also, the international publication The Banker recognized it as the most productive bank in Russia.
“In 2022, we will continue to grow, maybe not quite at the same pace, plus 50%, we will try to make more than 30-35% portfolio growth for ourselves. Our goal is to significantly increase our share in the retail market,” Chukhlov concluded.
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