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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Kostin, your bank is one of the leading ones in the country. I have looked through the reference notes. Your assets are worth 15.5 trillion.

President and Chairman of VTB Bank Management Board Andrei Kostin: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: You have 14 million customers. This is impressive. How was the bank’s performance in 2019?

Andrei Kostin: Mr President, our 2019 performance was quite good. If we look, first of all, at the financial indicators, the bank’s net profits under International Accounting Standards increased by ten percent, exceeding the 200-billion mark for the first time in our 30-year history (our bank will be 30 years old in October) and totalled 201 billion rubles. Of course, this had a positive effect on the bank’s capitalisation: the stock value and the bank’s capitalisation soared by 36 percent in 12 months.

The corporate dividends policy contributes to this. In 2020, we plan to pay 50 percent of our net profits as dividends. The state which holds a 61 percent stake is our main stockholder.

So, our performance is quite good, but we believe that our bank still has huge potential. In early 2020, we approved an ambitious 600 Days programme. There are plans to completely transform our bank using an entirely new digital platform over a 20-month period. This, of course, will make our customers even more comfortable and will provide them with many new digital products.

Last but not the least, we believe that these measures will help boost corporate profits by 50 percent, to 300 billion in the next three years. To my mind, this will become a very good indicator of the bank’s performance.

Vladimir Putin: And how is your mortgage programme developing?

Andrei Kostin: This is one of our main tools. In 2019, we expanded our mortgage portfolio by 20 percent. Today, VTB Bank issues 25 percent of all mortgages nationwide, and the volume of our mortgage programme has reached 1.8 trillion rubles.

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