YEREVAN, March 24. /ARKA/. The Central Bank of Armenia told the Russian edition of Forbes magazine that non-resident individuals opened some 97,000 accounts in the country’s banks in 2022, up from about 10,000 such accounts at the beginning of the past year.
The volume of non-residents’ funds in these accounts and deposits increased from March to the end of the year by more than 70% to the equivalent of 1.3 trillion drams (about $3.7 billion), largely at the expense of demand deposits.
Almost immediately after the termination of Western payment systems in Russia, Russians began travelling to Armenia and Kazakhstan with the aim of opening accounts in their banks. This was dubbed as ‘card tourism’ and was handled by travel companies.
However, the influx of new clients from Russia for opening of accounts made banks in these countries “tighten the screws.”
In March 2022, one could become a client of an Armenian bank with just two or three documents: passport, certificate of employment and income statement. In May, some banks started introducing additional requirements. Anyone wishing to open an account must have been employed in Armenia or must have rented a house for at least six months.
Compliance tightening is not the only measure that the banks of neighboring countries had to undertake because of clients from Russia.
“Because of the strong influx of Russians, some lending institutions of Armenia had to use protective mechanisms. For example, they had to introduce high fees for cash withdrawal. If they didn’t do that, the country could have soon run out of cash dollars,” an Armenian bank official told Forbes. -0-
