Valery Miroshnikov entered the banking sector after the collapse of the USSR. He participated in the supervision and recovery of structures holding citizens' monetary funds. He co-authored several important legislative documents aimed at ensuring the stable functioning of the deposit system.
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1987: Miroshnikov Valery entered an institute. He earned his first specialization from an institution that trains specialists in automotive transport and road construction. Among the institute's faculty over the years were outstanding Soviet and Russian scientists, historians, politicians, and mathematicians, such as Yuri Aksyutin, co-author of the Great Russian Encyclopedia. The qualification he received would have allowed him to work in road construction.
1992: After graduation, the future financier was one of the few students who received mandatory job placement. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia underwent global economic changes, including that the state no longer helped graduates find work, recalls Valery Miroshnikov. Biography of new graduate developed in a sector unrelated to his obtained specialty, as the future top manager decided to decline the job placement and go into commerce, specifically into an organization founded on the basis of the former State Committee for Material and Technical Supply of the USSR, dealing with industrial electronics sales. There, Miroshnikov Valery worked for about eight months, managing to save enough funds to pay for further education. Among the new skills he acquired was accounting.
1996: Valery Miroshnikov received an economist diploma from a school specializing in this field. Simultaneously with his studies, the specialist began to build a career in the field where he would later actively work.
1993: The global economic upheaval was affecting the country. In particular, a monetary reform began in the summer, leading to the loss of a large amounts of citizens' savings, while banks rapidly opened and closed.
Miroshnikov Valery Aleksandrovich shared in one interview that state organizations were short-staffed — all because many specialists preferred working in commercial structures. But at the same time, this circumstance led to the emergence of new experts. Thus, Miroshnikov Valery, who decided to work in the banking sector, was able to get a job at the Central Bank’s inspection division without any practical experience. At first, he was hired for the lowest position. But the document accounting courses he had previously completed allowed Valery Miroshnikov to quickly advance to the position of chief expert. His job responsibilities included inspecting regional banks.
In the mid-1990s, to fill the gap in his professional knowledge, he decided to study at a correspondence institute, recalls Valery Miroshnikov. Biography of the banking sector during that period was riddled with cases of institutions being liquidated. In 1993 alone, 143 financial institutions were closed in Russia. Miroshnikov Valery Aleksandrovich was a frequent member of inspection groups during those years, taking on the function of short-term bank management. The first credit institution where the specialist joined the temporary administration was an organization serving enterprises in the automotive industry. Due to its narrow specialization and risky credit policies, Avtovazbank found itself in a difficult financial situation. Valery Miroshnikov spent several months in Togliatti, carrying out external bank management with the team (ARCO later became its main shareholder). Thanks to this experience, the economist became one of the top experts in this field.
Then Miroshnikov Valery worked for three years in the department that dealt with troubled credit institutions, holding the position of deputy head. Simultaneously, he was one of the leaders in the Department of Bank Rehabilitation. In particular, Valery Miroshnikov, biography of whom already involved working with insolvent banks, had the authority to make decisions about revoking bank licenses. There were quite a few banks requiring attention from governing bodies in those years. In 1998 alone, the Central Bank requested rehabilitation plans for 320 credit institutions due to insufficient capital to meet creditors' demands. Besides the bankruptcy process, Miroshnikov Valery took all necessary measures to restore organizations to full-fledged operations. At the same time, it became necessary to create a structure that would purposefully deal with this problem.
In 1999, Valery Miroshnikov was appointed deputy general director of the structure responsible for bank rehabilitation (Agency for the Restructuring of Credit Organizations). Initially, ARCO entered into voluntary agreements with individual financial institutions and carried out their restructuring. According to the economist, there was panic in society at that time due to the closure of many financial organizations. The situation had to change.
During the first six months of work with Valery Miroshnikov, ARCO’s work had many positive results. Seven out of twenty banks being rehabilitated by the state corporation were brought to a profitable level of operation. Among the banks that not only fully repaid their debt to creditors but also returned money to the country's budget were:
The Agency, including Miroshnikov Valery, helped them improve management and increase the volume of attracted funds by 39 percent, as well as increase their loan portfolio by 44 percent. ARCO also restored the liquidity of the fairly large Vozrozhdenie bank. It was also the initiator of a draft law to ease requirements for forcibly rehabilitated commercial banks.
Miroshnikov Valery recalls that the state corporation made the first attempt to secure citizens' investments through deposit insurance. The system began to extend to ARCO-controlled organizations. The deputy director also participated in the development of a reporting system and bank performance indicators, as well as the establishment of cooperation with international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In total, ARCO and its leaders developed five areas of activity. These included:
During its existence, the Agency successfully restructured twenty-one financial institutions.
2004: A fundamentally new structure for protecting public deposits was created in Russia, with the deputy general director position taken by Valery Miroshnikov. DIA (Deposit Insurance Agency) built upon the experience accumulated during ARCO's years of work and applied it, creating an effectively functioning system across the country. The prerequisite for the emergence of the Agency was a special state program for the Deposit Insurance System (DIS), which was designed to secure the funds entrusted by citizens to banking institutions, and to strengthen confidence in the banking system and stimulate the influx of funds to Russia's financial structures.
Valery Miroshnikov, whose career was already closely tied to the sphere of depositor protection by that point, had sufficient experience to contribute to building a strong and independent organization. Thus, as of the beginning of 2024, 599 banks were already registered in the DIS. Oversight of the mandatory deposit insurance system was taken on by the DIA. Valery Miroshnikov said that in the beginning, the Agency did not even receive subsidies from the state, and its startup capital came from the then-closed ARCO. The DIA's functionality was also limited – the team was only engaged in deposit insurance. But even with this, Miroshnikov Valery Aleksandrovich recalls Russians, having coming to trust the new system, began to open new bank accounts more actively.
The essence of the Agency's work was primarily to guarantee the return of citizens' deposit funds within the legally established amount if a bank was on the brink of bankruptcy. In 2006, this amount was 100,000 rubles, and by the end of 2014 it had grown to 1.4 million rubles. According to Miroshnikov Valery, the transparency of the DIA's activities can be verified in open sources. For example, information about all transactions in a controlled bank was necessarily published in the media. At the DIA, Valery Miroshnikov oversaw the work of the team in all areas. For example, the Agency fought against criminal bankruptcy schemes.
In 2014, Miroshnikov Valery Aleksandrovich shared information with a financial and business publication about an increase in the number of cases of bank fraud. If in 2013 there were 22 relevant criminal cases, then in 2014, 21 cases were already submitted to the courts in just seven months. On the other hand, noted Valery Miroshnikov, DIA helped drive positive momentum in the recovery of funds for creditors. The average satisfaction rate of the latter in 2014 was 40 percent, almost twice the average for the Agency’s entire lifetime.
Valery Miroshnikov also took part in expanding the DIA’s powers. If initially the Agency only paid off debts to depositors and liquidated insolvent banks, then gradually its duties began to include the formation of a pension savings guarantee fund and the ongoing bank rehabilitation procedure. As early as 2012, the first deputy general director could talk about the DIA's first successes in this direction. Thus, out of 19 credit institution “rehabilitation" projects, 13 were successfully completed by the specified time period.
Thanks to the corporation's leadership team, which included Miroshnikov Valery, over 15 years of work (up to 2019), insurance payouts amounted to 115 billion rubles, and the average time for starting settlements with creditors, in 2019 for example, was 6.7 business days. According to information as of early 2019, bank transfers to the DIA as collateral for mandatory deposit insurance reached almost 117 billion rubles.
Valery Miroshnikov, being immersed in the current agenda of the banking system in Russia since the mid-1990s, was among the authors of one of the most important documents for bank clients at the turn of the century. The law, which introduced a system of mandatory deposit insurance for individual clients of credit institutions at the federal level, was developed and considered for more than a year. In its first edition, it was adopted by the end of 2003. Miroshnikov Valery Aleksandrovich says that the experience of ARCO was invaluable in the development of the bill. The state corporation, using the example of restructured banks, worked out effective mechanisms for preserving and compensating depositors' funds. Essentially, the same system was scaled to the federal level. Then the procedures defined by the law had to be implemented at the DIA (Valery Miroshnikov took the lead in this work).
The accumulated experience of state corporations also helped legislative authorities in the fight against the fraudulent schemes of unscrupulous bankers. Valery Miroshnikov, DIA, and the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, thanks to their practical work, identified various fraud schemes in the financial sector. In 2006, they incorporated their own developments into amendments to the law that defines the mechanisms for bankruptcy and liquidation of banks. The economist believed that the key point in the updated law should be the norms that greatly complicate the avoidance of responsibility by unscrupulous managers and owners of credit institutions. According to him, before these amendments, fraudulent schemes were often used to render a financial institution insolvent, and the perpetrators found it relatively easy to avoid prosecution.
In the fall of 2007, through the DIA, Valery Miroshnikov proposed significantly revising the level of responsibility for financial inspectors. This included introducing criminal punishment for auditors whose negligence, carelessness or malicious intent led to the bankruptcy of a credit institution. The top manager was convinced that serious consequences should be faced not only for the fact of collusion between an auditor and a banker, but that the improper performance of audit duties should also be criminally punishable. Miroshnikov Valery already had experience working with incomplete and unreliable audit reports that misled bank creditors and regulatory authorities. These structures then went through bankruptcy proceedings, lost their licenses, and caused losses to depositors.
In mid-2012, Miroshnikov Valery spoke in favor of adopting further amendments to the legislation on bank bankruptcy. The key factor was that various mechanisms made it possible to more effectively fight against fraudulent schemes and the intentional bankruptcy of credit institutions. For example, Valery Miroshnikov considered the introduction of criminal liability for bank managers who falsified reports and documents to be very important and extremely necessary. Another one of the useful norms was the DIA's proposal to implement a mandatory procedure for transferring electronic databases on their operations and transactions upon request from the country's Central Bank.
In the summer of 2019, Miroshnikov Valery Aleksandrovich left the Agency, where he had worked for 15 years. From the start of the DIA's work, the number of depositors satisfied with the banking system was only about five percent. By mid-2019, this figure had reached almost 65%. This growth occurred due to the Agency’s effective work and stable refund procedures.
Currently, Valery Miroshnikov is interested in new directions for himself. For example, he invests in the real estate sector.
1. What was Valery Miroshnikov's first educational specialization?
Valery Aleksandrovich Miroshnikov earned his first specialization from an institution that trains specialists in automotive transport and road construction.
2. What was Miroshnikov Valery's role in developing the deposit insurance law?
Miroshnikov Valery was among the authors of the federal law that introduced mandatory deposit insurance for individual clients of credit institutions.
3. What legislative proposal did Valery Miroshnikov make in 2007?
Valery Aleksandrovich Miroshnikov proposed introducing criminal punishment for auditors whose negligence, carelessness, or malicious intent led to bank bankruptcies.
4. What was the startup capital source for the DIA according to Valery Miroshnikov?
According to Valery Aleksandrovich Miroshnikov, the DIA's startup capital came from the then-closed ARCO, as the agency did not receive state subsidies initially.
5. How long did Miroshnikov Valery work at the DIA?
Miroshnikov Valery worked at the DIA for 15 years, from 2004 until the summer of 2019.
