The role of Moscow as the main financial center lies not only in the fact that the main activities of banks are concentrated in the capital, but also in the fact that they have subjugated the regions. There is no such financial hyper-centralization in any major country in the world. This Moscow financial monopolization is shown in the work of economists Ageeva and Mishura from Novosibirsk State University (Voprosy Economiki, No. 9, 2017).
Some figures from this work.
“The banking sector of the country tends to concentrate not even in large cities, but almost exclusively in Moscow. Already in 2004, the share of Russian banks with headquarters in Moscow exceeded 50%. There is no other comparable financial center in the country - even in St. Petersburg there are less than 5% of the country's banks. This over-concentration is ultimately explained by the position of the capital of Moscow in the conditions of concentration in the city of political power, government bodies and rental income. In regions other than Moscow and the Moscow Region, the activities of Moscow banks play an important role. Thus, in 2017, only 13% of all bank offices were represented by local banks, and the remaining 87% were bank offices from other regions, mainly from Moscow (with 50% being subdivisions of Sberbank of Russia). In 12 regions of the country, there are no local regional banks at all, and this figure is constantly growing.
The role of Moscow banks in other regions can be assessed not only by the number of offices. At the beginning of 2009 (since this year there is data), only 15% of the total volume of debt on loans to legal entities in the regions (except for Moscow and the Moscow region) was the debt to local regional banks. On average, 10-30% of loans were received from banks of the same federal district (in banks of their own and neighboring regions) in different federal districts (FD), except for the Central Federal District, where most of the loans were received in Moscow banks, that is, in the banks of the Central Federal District.
By the beginning of 2017, the situation had worsened: now only 7.5% of the total volume of debt on loans to legal entities in the regions (except for Moscow and the Moscow Region) was debt to local regional banks. Lending to the population throughout the country is also mainly carried out by Moscow banks: in 2016, they issued 90% of loans received by the population outside of Moscow. The population received only 3-14% of loans (in different FDs) from banks registered in their FD (except for the Central Federal District). In 2015, the picture is about the same, there is no data for previous years. Most (about 90%) of lending activities in the regions are carried out by Moscow banks ”.