As part of the implementation of its ESG strategy, VTB bank is launching an endowment program for Russian universities on campus projects.
The program provides quarterly contributions to the universities, with all transactions made on campus cards. A stable source of extrabudgetary funding will allow universities to systematically develop key projects, provide grants and awards to the top performing students.
The Campus Project is a university infrastructure management system that combines university services into a single system based on the VTB campus payroll Multicard. It serves not only as a payment device, but also as a unique identifier, an access key to the university's infrastructure, financial and non-financial services. The turnover on these cards will serve as a source of additional income for the participant of the Campus Project: the bank will transfer deductions from transactions made on campus cards to the endowment fund of the university, which will become a kind of cashback for the development of the educational centre.
Universities create endowment funds to attract additional funding, expand revenue base and improve financial stability. They use the income of the funds to finance new projects in educational activities, the development of research and scientific-practical activities of students and teachers, the publication of monographs and collections of scientific papers. Large infrastructure and social projects can also receive funds.
Garif Romashkin, head of the Salary Projects Department at VTB said:
“VTB has extensive experience in launching campus projects in the scientific field: more than a third of the 710 higher education institutions in Russia cooperate with us. We expect that number to exceed half by 2023. The endowment will allow universities to receive additional income from cooperation with the bank as part of the campus project. This is a serious increase in financing key educational tasks for both the teaching staff and students.”
The new program has become part of VTB's ESG strategy. Garif Romashkin added:
“Supporting education, helping to create a digital educational environment, developing talents and attracting them to the leading team of one of the largest banks in the country is our contribution to the sustainable development of Russian universities. By joint efforts, we can not only fulfil our tasks of operational support of salary projects, but also invest in future generations, providing them with all the opportunities for high-quality and affordable education.”
Today, 240 endowment funds of all sectors are registered in Russia, with almost half (43%) of the target capital belonging to higher education institutions. Fifteen universities have endowment funds with assets of over 500 million rubles. The market is gradually diversifying through new development sectors: secondary education (private schools), healthcare, sports and others.
The volume of Russian endowment funds is actively growing (growth in 2020 was 19%) and amounted to 38.9 billion rubles ($520.5 mn) in Q3. 2021. The market leader in endowment trust management is VTB Capital Asset Management (the FCC's asset management market share is 35%), which have been successfully cooperating with the country's largest endowments for more than 10 years, financing projects in the fields of education, culture, art, science, non-professional sports and other important areas of social development. Today, VTB Capital Investments manages 90 endowments, the total amount of funds of which comes to more than 16 billion rubles ($214.1 mn).
In 2019, VTB Group created a trust fund for the development of the Dynamo Football Academy. L. I. YASHINA The new tool will provide stable long-term funding for the academy and the target size of the fund is 5 billion rubles ($66.9 mn). The group has already contributed most of the funds through VTB Leasing and VTB Capital, the remaining funds are planned to be raised through sponsors, as well as through a crowd-funding program, which includes the participation of the club's fans.