Assessing the Impact of the Digital Ruble on Commercial Bank Deposits in Russia

The purpose of this article is to present a model for assessing the impact of the implementation of the digital ruble project on commercial banks’ deposits in the Russian financial market. The relevance of this research is due to the rapid growth of market capitalization of central banks’ digital currencies in both international and Russian financial markets, as more and more countries are preparing to launch their own national digital currencies. However, there is a lack of information in both academic and practical literature regarding the potential impact of central bank digital currencies, including the digital ruble, on the stability of commercial banks, particularly concerning deposits. We propose a model to estimate the impact of the digital ruble on the size of deposits of commercial banks in Russia. The data used for the study included official statistics and analytics of the Bank of Russia and commercial banks. Based on the results of the analysis, we conclude that the effects of the digital ruble implementation are heterogeneous and do not differ much between categories of banks in terms of capital and investments in government securities, but are significantly differentiated depending on the size of assets and level of overdue debt. Furthermore, we suggest that the effect of the digital ruble will diminish over time. Future research could focus on quantifying the wide range of risks associated with the introduction of digital financial assets, as well as modeling the supply and demand for these assets, including potential practical adaptations by banks to changes in market conditions.