OREANDA-NEWS The Central Bank dismissed 45% of employees of banking supervision as a result of centralization of this service, told Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Olga Polyakova.

According to this information, the cuts took place both in the territorial units and in the Central office of the Bank of Russia. Now less than 1 thousand people are engaged in banking supervision in the Central Bank.

"There was a selection, professional testing, and employees who claimed or already held senior positions, were also tested for the ability to manage processes," Polyakova said.

As a result of the reform, the purpose of which was the centralization of banking supervision, this activity was concentrated in two divisions of the Central Bank — the service of current banking supervision (STBN) and the Department of supervision of systemically important credit institutions. At the same time, the STBN employees are representatives of the Central Bank in the regions.

“Our main task now is to move to a comprehensive assessment of the credit institution's activities, and this can be done only with a full understanding of what its business model is, to see its activities in the context of the region, in different business segments. That is, what the Bank earns, what it loses, what its strengths and weaknesses, how it is viable in a complex competitive environment in the market. Among the advantages-and the ability to compare banking business models for their quality indicators. Centralization solves the problem of different approaches to the same situations in different regions, which sometimes arose due to the fact that regional units were too "imbued with sympathy" for the supervised ones. But it is rather a more private problem.” Polyakova said

This reform of the Central Bank began in March 2017. In September, sources said that in summer the Bank of Russia dismissed about 10% of STBN. At the same time, some of the employees were fired after a polygraph test.