The irony of the situation is that he may be charged with implementing an idea he has been opposing as head of Sberbank. I am referring to Postbank, which can become a powerful rival of Sberbank.
Karl Marx, the grandfather of socialism, once said that history is an ironic poet. He was proved right several times, and now his prediction can materialize in the Russian banking sector.
The idea of a Postbank was gradually gathering momentum over the last three to five years. However, Kazmin's staunch opposition prevented its materialization.
The advocates of Postbank argued that the national postal service has 40,000 outlets across Russia, which could be used as bank offices. The only other institution to match it was Sberbank.
The Post of Russia has several advantages over Sberbank. First, it has outlets in the remotest parts of the country. And second, unlike bank offices, post offices cannot be closed as unprofitable. So, they should offer not only postal but also banking services to all categories of the population.
Experts also said that the cost of overhauling post offices in the regions would be several times smaller than the cost of opening new bank offices. This is true, as the government will not have to buy or lease post offices from itself.
It will only need to complement them with banking offices, including ATMs and automatic dispensers used to pay loan interest or transfer funds to plastic cards. They would service low- and medium-income groups, who have grown used to the advantages of a standard set of banking products and services.
With time, competition will force Postbank to establish the necessary infrastructure for more complicated banking products. However, it can begin by making classical banking services more easily available to the people. The advocates of the idea referred to Western experience, where postbanks are quite profitable (for example, Deutsche Post).
Top Russian officials apparently liked the idea. A year ago, Vladimir Putin said at a meeting of the State Council on the banking reform that the postal infrastructure could be used to simplify public access to banking services.
But the reform did not take off immediately, in part because of the fierce opposition by Sberbank and its chairman. Sberbank, which is the country's leader in retail banking services (especially among low- and medium-income Russians), did not need another huge retail bank with a large network of offices and a client base any lending institution would envy.
Therefore, the government only said it would be good to have such a bank, while commercial banks increasingly used postal services to improve their operation.
Home Credit & Finance Bank started issuing consumer loans at post offices in 2006. In the first five months of this year, it issued 85,000 loans worth 1.7 billion rubles ($67.8 million). Sviaz-Bank, traditionally linked to the telecoms sector, began mounting ATMs in post offices, and now has 20,000 of them.
The commercial banks' inroads into the domain of the postal service can be cut short now. Andrei Kazmin, former head of Sberbank and the main opponent of the Postbank idea, is likely to be charged with turning the postal service into a bank.
Arkady Komyaginsky, senior vice president and board member of Sviaz-Bank, said: "Kazmin has the necessary skills and influence to make Postbank a match to Sberbank. Playing against his former club could be a beautiful intrigue."
This will be easy for Kazmin, because he knows how to turn losing state-controlled enterprises into profitable businesses. When he became Sberbank's chairman in 1996, its capitalization was only $1.5 billion and its net assets were barely $25 billion. He increased the bank's capitalization to $87 billion and net assets, to $174.5 billion.
The Post of Russia is an ailing establishment: it lost 2.8 billion rubles ($110 million) last year, and its expenses were 4% higher than revenues. This could come as an interesting challenge to Kazmin.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
