Swedish bank Handelsbanken has opened a new branch in St Petersburg, adding to its current Russian branch in Moscow, to cater for both corporate and private customers.
The new branch will offer the full range of Handelsbanken’s corporate services and will target customers from the bank’s domestic markets in the Nordic countries and Great Britain.
Plans to begin offering services for private customers are also underway.
The financial market is booming. But it is not yet an integral part of Russian private customers’ everyday lives. By no means everyone has a bank account. But with the middle class expanding so strongly, the demand for universal banking services is increasing. For this reason, we are in the advanced stages of planning to open up for private customers, said Raimo Valo, head of Handelsbanken Russia.
Russia has been gradually emerging as an important market, with its economy growing by a steady 6% to 7% a year in recent years, driven primarily by oil and gas income.