Peculiarities of forming business trends in the financial services sector amidst stagnant shrinkage of the economy

The article presents an overview of business trends in the financial services sector, based on the results of a survey held at the end of 2013 by Higher School of Economics jointly with the Information and Publishing Center «Statistics of Russia». The methodology is based on an international practice of sectoral business tendencies monitoring taking into account peculiarities of the Russian economy at the current stage. More than 2,6 thousand top managers of financial institutions were questioned in order to obtain their estimates of the level and changes of key indicators. The analysis of opinions, sentiment and expectations of economic agents allowed to characterize the features and development trends of the sector in 2013, to identify the dominant constraints, as well as to form a short-term forecast for the first half of 2014. The study revealed that despite the stagnation of the Russian economy and ambiguous prospects for the world economy, financial market in general, according to his agents’ estimation, still retains stability and potential for further development. Endogenous systemic factors, mainly the uncertainty of the economic situation in Russia, as well as legal and institutional problems, made more negative impact on financial market than global environment. According to authors’ point of view, whilst building up exterior and interior barriers in activities of financial institutions, positive short-term forecasts of their top managers, as well as established long-term benchmarks of country’s economic policy, are unlikely to be fully implemented.

деловой климат, деловые тенденции, финансовые услуги, конъюнктурные обследования, кредитные организации, страховые организации, негосударственные пенсионные фонды, business climate, business tendencies, financial services, business tendencies surveys, credit institutions, insurance companies, pension funds

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