A new study analyzing 10 years of public data from Banki.ru reveals that bank ratings are primarily driven by active solicitation of feedback rather than service quality. Between 2022 and 2024, the number of reviews for 28 major banks surged from 149,000 to 672,000, while average ratings rose from 2.1 to 4.6. The research indicates that doubling the number of reviews correlates with a 0.35-point increase in the average rating.
The analysis shows that high ratings do not significantly boost retail loan growth. Instead, banks are increasingly focusing on transactional bases and payment services. For instance, three major marketplace banks—Ozon, Wildberries, and Yandex—saw their assets grow 13–70 times between late 2023 and August 2026, significantly outpacing the industry median, while their loan portfolios remain relatively small.
The study highlights that complaints regarding credit products serve as a reliable indicator of risk levels. A higher volume of such complaints per billion rubles of the retail portfolio correlates with increased loan loss provisions. Conversely, the research found no evidence that high service ratings attract more deposits during periods of high interest rates, confirming that deposit growth is driven by pricing and conditions.
The dataset, titled 'Russian Bank Reviews: Banki.ru Rating 2019–2026', includes 1,697 entries covering 146–262 banks annually. The author utilized Banki.ru aggregate data, cross-referencing it with Form 101 reports from the Central Bank of Russia. Due to data gaps in 2022 and incomplete 2026 figures, the study focuses on annual trends while excluding individual review texts to comply with platform terms.
