Unfortunately, the domestic banking system is designed in such a way that successful institutions conducting profitable activities over a long period of time can suddenly stop their work. The reason is simple - a license is revoked from the bank for transactions. As a result, ordinary bank depositors suffer - those who kept their funds in it. It’s hard to know where the money with which the bank operated is going.
One of them is Metrobank. Testimonials and official data indicate that the institution lost its license in 2015. Before that, the institution had been successfully operating for many years, which is understandable after viewing statistics (profit and loss of the bank for specific years). Read more about what Metrobank was, reviews of depositors whose money was “stuck”, as well as other information on this subject, read in this article.
General information about the bank
To begin with, the institution began its work back in 1993 under the name “Color Bank”. At the same time, the company managing the bank was able to obtain the status of a member of the Visa association in order to conduct transactions with customer accounts. After that, an active buildup of funds and the pace of development began.
For example, already in 2005, the authorized capital was increased to 150 million rubles. Soon Metrobank (employee reviews confirm this) received a license to trade in securities on the stock market. At the same time, new customers were attracted to the structure, and the Russian Federation was actively injecting into the national deposit insurance system .
Over the following years of the bank’s history, one can see how new products were created, incomes grew, and financial mass increased. And on June 1, 2015, the regulator in the banking market decided to revoke the license under which Metrobank worked. Reviews show that this happened after the institution stopped paying people their money. Read more about why this happened.
Programs and banking products
Interestingly, the institution worked with a number of profitable products for which there was a demand from customers. In particular, in addition to classical lending and accepting deposits, servicing accounts and conducting transactions, Metrobank (employee reviews confirm this) was the first to bring consumer lending to the online store market. More precisely, they came up with loans to people who want to make a purchase in online shops. This happened back in 2005, which was unthinkable, given the insufficient degree of development of information technology.
The Bank also implemented other similar innovations in its sector. For example, in 2008, an action was carried out according to which all penalties for loans were canceled for 2 weeks, provided that the borrower fully repaid the overdue loan. In addition, in the same year multicurrency deposits were opened , which also are not in all institutions in the list of services. This shows the level of development of the bank, those advanced banking technologies that were used in its work.
Ratings
Of course, given the gradual growth of the bank’s assets and the increase in its popularity among customers, Metrobank, which we will publish reviews about in the future, has been repeatedly noted in different ratings. For example, in 2009 the Expert RA agency assigned the bank the status of “acceptable creditworthiness” (which corresponds to the B ++ rating). Already in 2012, the authoritative Internet portal “Banks.ru” assigned this institution 245th place in the rating of banks in terms of capital. RBC classified Metrobank as the second stability group, which includes medium-sized banks.
That is, we can say that the institution was not in the first positions of the lists, but it had a lot of clients, which ensured the bank's positions stable growth for many years. In 2014, the shareholders decided to transfer the bank from the status of a closed joint-stock company to the form “Joint-stock company”.
Market positioning
The general concept of the institution was as follows: the bank was presented as universal. What attracted Metrobank? Customer reviews are similar: the bank surprised with a wide range of services: loans, deposits, securities management, dealer activity.
It was convenient for bank customers to make transfers in the networks of Visa, MasterCard WorldWide payment systems. Moreover, the bank was connected to Rapida payments and made it possible to conduct transactions with American Express and Western Union checks.
Profitability
What did this give Metrobank? Employee reviews indicate that the bank did not experience profit problems. If you believe the official information in the form of weather reporting, we can say that the decrease in assets occurred only in 2009. The rest of the time, the bank showed stable profit: from 807 million rubles in 2006, its assets grew to 13 billion in 2014.
Most interestingly, the growth of indicators could be observed by many criteria: not only by the total amount of the bank’s funds, but also by such subcategories as receipts from individuals, deposits, retained earnings - there was an increase everywhere. This proves that the development of the bank was even.
License revocation
True, in spite of everything, the license was revoked from Metrobank. This happened, as noted above, in 2015. The initiator of the recall was the Bank of Russia, which referred to the bank institution's failure to fulfill its obligations to creditors, non-compliance with laws on activities, and creating a threat to the interests of depositors and borrowers. Also, in the information that was published on the regulator’s website, it was noted that all these actions were the result of the reluctance of the bank’s management to improve the situation in their institution, due to the lack of reserve funds in case of loan defaults, due to the inability to comply with court decisions on payment compensation to depositories.
User reviews
However, all this is true. If we find feedback on loans and deposits about a financial institution called Metrobank, the following picture will be formed. In recent months, the institution has ceased to issue loans in the loan market. Many users simply received refusals when formally the situation in the bank remained stable. Next came the “first calls” - delayed payments. All reviews look very similar, although they were written by different people. The situation was as follows: a person comes to the cashier, asks to return his money to him, the cashier replies: this is impossible, come again. Of course, after this, a real panic began among the depositors of the institution on the Internet: people did not know where to turn and to whom, in order to return their money.
Employee Reviews
What was the situation on the other side of the barricades? What happened to the people who worked for Metrobank? Since the institution had their license revoked, most of them were left without work. This is a normal process: after the closure of the enterprise followed by reductions. They also touched the staff of the bank. Salaries to them, by the way, were also delayed.
What we have? Two facts are obvious: the first - for several years the bank showed good results and generated profit. The second - this year the leadership’s actions were called unprofessional, and a license to operate was selected. The question arises: why do they close a successful bank, and what happens to the money that was in its accounts? Apparently no one can answer it ...
In the meantime, people are waiting for their compensation payments. When they will be, and whether they will be at all - time will tell.