Bankir.ru’s experts looked into the Russian banking sector’s last year’s successes and failures, with the emphasis laid on the investments made by private individuals. Their research has shown that the volume of private customers’ deposits increased by 16.9% in 2008, which was actually only a half of what the experts had predicted earlier. Then, the deposit volume growth only came to .1% in September through December 2008. Nevertheless, some of the provincial banks managed to keep their performance up in spite of the dropping demand for the deposit products; besides, these banks were actually featured on the country’s Top 100 list based on the volume of private individuals’ deposits, the spokesperson for the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development says.

As far as Sverdlovsk Region is concerned, seven local banks made it to the Top 100 rating. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with its 18,502 million RUR worth of private investment, was given the 23d position in the country-wide rating, which is better than any other Sverdlovsk Region-based bank managed to score.