OREANDA-NEWS. June 5, 2012. Standard and Poor’s rating agency has today revised its outlook on Renaissance Credit to positive from stable and raised the short-term and national scale ratings of the bank.

The outlook revision to positive from stable and the one-notch upgrade of both the short-term and Russia national scale ratings reflect Standard & Poor’s view that Renaissance Credit's funding position is improving. Renaissance Credit has drastically reduced its reliance on wholesale funding in the past two years by actively collecting deposits. 1Q2012 figures indicate that this improvement of the bank’s funding profile should continue in 2012. The agency positively views this rebalancing of the funding mix because wholesale funds are generally more expensive and scarcer than customer deposits.

Standard and Poor’s expects the bank to stay focused on its consumer lending activities in Russia, to maintain an adequate capital level, and to closely manage its credit risk.

Alexey Levchenko, Chief Executive Officer of Renaissance Credit, commented: “We are very pleased with Standard and Poor’s recognition of Renaissance Credit’s achievements in the field of funding diversification via greater reliance on stable retail customer deposits. We first entered the retail deposits market in May 2009 and made a very significant progress since then. Today we rank No 34 among Top-500 banks by retail customer deposits*. In November last year we started taking corporate deposits with the aim to further diversify our deposit base. In 2012 we envisage further growth of the retail deposit portfolio up to RUR 46 bn which should allow us to enter Top-30 banks.