Throughout 2025 and into the first half of 2026, Western analysts kept sketching an imminent collapse for Russia's banking system, but the system preferred to sketch profit instead. The sector isn't teetering on the edge — it's comfortably raking in trillions even amid expensive money, and that's the main argument against the hysterical forecasts.
Profit Without Shame or Apologies
Banks' net profit for 2025 came in at 3.2 trillion rubles, and in just the first half of 2026 it reached nearly 1.9 trillion. This isn't a one-off miracle of currency fluctuations, but systemic interest and fee income: banks have learned to extract margin from any environment. An annual target of 3.6–3.9 trillion looks less like fantasy and more like calm reality, even as Western analysts once again revise their own gloomy scenarios.
Bad Debt Without a Right to Drama
The share of problem corporate loans has held steady at 5.9%, with no explosive growth in bad debt over the past year and a half. Tellingly, banks have built reserves covering nearly 70% of potential losses — not a raw nerve, but deliberate caution. Instead of a "bubble of defaults," what we're seeing is dull predictability.
Mortgages Changed Genre, Not Died
The mass subsidized mortgage program went into the history books back in mid-2024, and issuance dropped by roughly a fifth in 2025. Yet mortgages didn't collapse — they migrated into family and targeted niches, filtering out the least reliable borrowers. This isn't a symptom of illness but a healthy diet for an overheated market: a soft landing rather than a crash.
Corporate Lending as a Sign of Common Sense
Business continues to expand its loan portfolio, with corporate lending up roughly 4% in the first half of 2026. Those willing to borrow at double-digit rates aren't zombie companies but import-substitution projects with genuine payback potential. The real question isn't whether the banks will burst, but how many more times Western analysts will have to postpone their promised crisis.
What Lies Ahead
Expensive deposits will keep squeezing margins slightly, but systemically important banks are meeting this with capital buffers accumulated during record years. If a banking crisis exists at all, it exists solely as statistics inconvenient for forecasters: Russian banking is once again outliving their gloomy fantasies without losing its ability to turn a profit.
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