Center-invest Bank participated in a working meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture to discuss prospects for the development of the agricultural complex within the region.
The meeting was held at the Don State Agrarian University. Experts discussed prospects for cooperation in developing the region’s agricultural complex, programmes to support agricultural producers, the implementation of new technologies, improvement of the living standards for rural residents, and specialist training.
Center-invest Bank is one of the leading regional banks in lending to the agricultural sector. The bank serves a client base of over one and a half million, including 46 thousand corporate accounts. As of the September 1, 2025, the loan portfolio of legal entities amounted to 43.8 billion roubles, with almost 50% of these loans being provided to borrowers from the agricultural sector.
In 2025, Center-invest Bank provided loans totalling 9.4 billion roubles to agricultural enterprises, 8.5 billion roubles of which were provided under the preferential lending programme. A substantial proportion (more than 90%) of preferential loans to the agricultural complex, provided by the bank, is allocated to small businesses. As of today, the total value of Ministry of Agriculture preferential loans by the bank stands at 18.5 billion roubles. The bank’s own (non-subsidised) programmes make up more than half of the loan portfolio for farmers.
Center-invest Bank effectively manages the risks of lending to the agricultural complex. The socially responsible banking model that the bank has implemented represents a significant competitive advantage for the Rostov region. The average yield of Center-invest Bank clients is higher than the average for agricultural regions in 2025: higher for wheat by 11.5%, and for sunflower by 20.7%.
Center-invest Bank is working to encourage its clients to increase the resilience of agricultural producers to climate risks through the implementation of adaptation projects (low CO2-emission agricultural machinery, irrigation systems, land reclamation, technical re-equipment, conservation agriculture technologies, and agricultural storage infrastructure).
The bank is actively implementing the preferential "Rural Mortgage" programme for the construction and acquisition of residential properties in rural areas. Since the Rural Mortgage programme launch, Center-invest Bank has issued more than 4,800 mortgage loans totaling 16.1 billion roubles.
Center-invest Bank experts presented the meeting participants with a developed analytical platform for macroeconomic indicators, "Don and Russia." The platform incorporates over 500 official government statistics indicators since 1993 and enables users to structure and analyse data with visual dashboards, tables and predictive models. The analysis of trends, correlations, and principal components conducted allows us to design the Don economy for the current situation, 2030, and 2036, as well as the impact of agriculture on consumer lending, investment, real incomes, and the budget.
Thanks to its sound, balanced risk management policy, the bank was able to reduce its lending rate by 5 percentage points relative to the market, preserve the business and employment of its clients, and boost their tax payments by 2.3 billion roubles (an increase of 11.2%). At the same time, the quality of the loan portfolio in various segments exceeds the average indicators for loan portfolios in the Rostov region by 2 to 20 times.
The participants informed the students and faculty at DonSAU of the results of the meeting.