On 18 March the President and Executive Board of Center-invest Bank presented the audited IFRS financial statements for 2014 at a business breakfast for partners and investors held in Moscow. This is the nineteenth year that the bank has reported under IFRS. Our auditor is PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit.

Dr Vasily Vysokov, the president and chairman of Center-invest Bank's Board of Directors, announced the results for 2014: the bank’s assets were RUB91.3bn (+20.2%), loan and lease portfolio — RUB72bn (+17%), capital — RUB 9.6bn (+9.5%), and profits RUB1.1bn (-21.5%).

To put our performance in context, although there is no aggregate IFRS data for the Russian banking sector, under Russian Accounting Standards, the profitability of the sector as a whole was down 40.7%. Without allowing for foreign exchange revaluation, assets grew by 18.3%.

Center-invest Bank was commended by its partners and investors for its strong performance, achieved thanks to its sustainable banking business model.

Our partners were pleasantly surprised and very interested in our policy of keeping loan interest rates down for our customers, said Sergey Smirnov, Deputy Chairman of Center-invest Banks Executive Board. This policy allows the bank to avoid a spiral of ever-increasing risks. It means that we can develop sustainable lending, and encourages our customers to implement projects that will deliver long-term results.

In terms of the economic environment in which the bank operates, the auditors noted the following:

• sensitivity of the Russian economy to oil and gas price fluctuations;
• changes to the legal framework and lack of consensus about how to interpret the law;
• the negative impact of international sanctions.

At the same time, the fact that the bank operates primarily in southern Russia had a positive impact on its 2014 results. Southern Russia has favourable environmental and climatic conditions, relatively well-developed infrastructure, and a diversified economic structure, with a high percentage of SMEs. All of these factors are competitive advantages for southern Russia and Center-invest Bank.

Economic growth in southern Russia was more dynamic and stable than in most other Russian regions. Its main economic sector, agriculture, substantially outperformed the Russian average.

The auditor's report is available on our website (.pdf)