1 September 2026
What you actually pay your bank: every fee, including the ones no document shows
I have spent ten years in finance, five of them with private clients, and I see both sides of the table. Here is how a bank's income on you is actually built, where the two invisible fees hide, and why two clients holding identical products are worth different amounts to the bank.
Open your statement. There are almost no fees in it
Account maintenance is free. Transfers are free. The card is free. Judging by the statement, the bank works with you for almost nothing.
It does not work for nothing. Its main income simply is not formatted as your expense.
How far from formatted is visible in official statistics. According to the Bank of Russia, in 2025 the net interest income of the banking sector was 7.58 trillion roubles, and net fee income 2.37 trillion. Fees account for less than a quarter of banks' core income. All the rest is interest margin, which appears nowhere in your statement.
I do not consider this deception. A bank is a commercial organisation; it is obliged to earn. The problem sits elsewhere: you make decisions without knowing what they cost you.
What a bank's income on a private client is made of
Broadly, of two parts.
Interest income. Deposits, savings accounts, investment products carrying a management fee, margin trading. The bank raises your money at one rate and places it at another; the difference stays with the bank.
Fee income. Commissions on exchange transactions - you bought a share, you sold a share. Insurance products: motor, property, travel. That is if the bank runs an ecosystem.
The ratio differs by bank, and the spread is wide. For 2025, fees made up 19% of combined interest and fee income at Sber, about 22% at T-Technologies and more than 40% at VTB - the last only because the group's interest income fell 11%.
And here is how it looks at the level of a single private client. Frank RG's study «Premium banking in Russia 2025», based on a benchmark of ten banks, gives this structure: gross profit per premium client is 45.3 thousand roubles, of which 83% comes from interest income and only 17% from fees. A year earlier the split was 79 to 21 - the tilt towards interest is increasing.
The same study contains the breakdown that answers the question in the headline most directly. Annual bank income per client, by the client's capital:
By the client's capital. Source: Frank RG, «Premium banking in Russia 2025»
That is the approximate answer to «how much do I pay my bank». No line in your statement carries this figure.
Everything listed so far is visible in one form or another: the rate sits in the contract, the transaction fee in the tariff schedule, the insurance premium in the policy. Now for what is not visible.
Invisible fee number one: the FX spread
You make a transfer with conversion, and the app says «no fee». That is true: there is no fee as a separate payment. It is inside the rate.
The market price of a dollar is 86 roubles; your transfer goes through at 90. The gap between the bank's rate and the official rate is the charge for the transfer. On one thousand dollars that is 4 thousand roubles you will never see debited.
One caveat for readers outside Russia. Since 2022 the dollar and the euro have been effectively unavailable to retail clients on the Moscow Exchange, so «the exchange rate of the dollar» is no longer a meaningful benchmark here. The reference point is the official Bank of Russia rate on the date of the transaction.
The yuan, however, does trade, and there the gap can be measured precisely. At the close on 28 August 2026 the yuan stood at 12.91 roubles on the Moscow Exchange. In the same days large banks were selling cash yuan at 13.27-13.85 roubles - on average 5.5% above the exchange rate, ranging from +2.8% to +7.3% depending on the bank. The official central bank rate on 30 August was 12.73 roubles, below the exchange close - so the familiar «bank versus central bank» comparison understates the real gap.
The pattern: the higher the service tier, the narrower the spread in the app. Banks do not disclose the size of this gap in public tariffs, limiting themselves to phrases such as «a favourable exchange rate for premium clients».
Invisible fee number two: the order-book spread
The second invisible charge lives where you trade securities.
At any moment the order book holds two prices: the one at which you can buy and the one at which you can sell. They do not coincide. That difference - the spread - is also your cost, even though the broker's commission appears as a separate line and looks insignificant.
On liquid instruments the spread is narrow. On illiquid ones a round trip can consume several per cent of capital before any return at all.
A third place where the price is hidden: the fee inside the product
In funds, the manager's fee is deducted from the result before you see the return figure. You do not pay separately - you are simply shown less.
The management fee is the only item on this list that is usually stated honestly in the documents and expressed as a percentage per annum.
Orders of magnitude
In my experience the interest margin on a retail client is 7-10%, and on a private banking client about one per cent. This is not the same as the published sector margin: that is calculated against all of a bank's assets, not against the client's money. For reference: according to the Bank of Russia, the net interest margin of Russian banks was 4.4% for 2024 and 5.1% in the first quarter of 2026.
In percentage terms retail is higher; in absolute terms the reverse. A retail client brings in tens of thousands of roubles a year, a wealthy private banking client hundreds of thousands.
Why two identical clients are worth different amounts to the bank
Take two clients. Both receive the same salary into the account, both hold a 3 million rouble deposit, both have the same set of products.
The first selects boosted cashback categories every month, uses airport lounges, draws the full credit card limit, uses the travel insurance included with the premium package and files a claim on it, and contacts support often. He extracts every privilege available.
The second, with the same set of products, rarely contacts support, does not always select cashback categories, does not draw the card limit and has never used the insurance.
On a product statement these two are twins. To the bank they are two different clients. The practical conclusion: the terms you are offered are set by your behaviour, not by the balance on your account. The second client more often receives improved rates - not because he is «better», but because the economics of the relationship allow the bank to give them.
A perfect calculation of the form «a client with these products brings in that much» simply does not exist. It all comes down to the behaviour of the specific person.
How a bank works out what you are worth: two schools
There is no single industry practice. There are two schools, and they measure different things.
The first is product-level unit economics. The bank looks at operating income from the product itself: a savings account has been launched, and what matters is that it is in the black. Which client contributed how much plays no part. This is how the majority work.
The second is client-level unit economics. The bank looks at operating income from the individual person. This is how the minority work, though a number of banks are interested in moving across. The rest of this section is about the second school, because it is the one that matters to you.
(In management accounting these are product-level and customer-level profitability; in strategy terms, the product-centric and the client-centric model.)
The client model has two metrics:
- Operating income per client - what you have actually brought in up to today. This is the past.
- Lifetime value - a forecast of what you will bring in going forward. Horizons differ: three years, five, seven, ten - each bank picks its own.
And here is the fork where banks err in both directions.
The first extreme is to look only at operating income. A minus shows up on a client, and the bank starts restricting privileges and trimming terms. Losses already incurred are not recovered by this, and nobody asked whether this person is in fact the one to work with first.
Negative economics usually means exactly one thing: the person uses the bank intensively - cashback, insurance, limits, services. He is loyal.
The second extreme is to look only at lifetime value. That is closer to right, but still not it. A client with a huge forecast and near-zero operating income is cold. He does not use the bank, and warming him up takes a long time.
What works is a hybrid, and the order within it matters. Operating income selects those who are already loyal and use the bank intensively. Lifetime value shows which of them has the greater potential. Work starts with that intersection.
What this means for you personally. If you use your bank intensively, you are in the group worked with first, even when your current economics are negative. And if you are simply wealthy but cold, you will be worked with more slowly - and that is not about you personally, it is about the queue.
This holds especially in private banking, where a client's future income matters more than the past.
Where mis-selling comes from
The most common assumption: the banker has been handed a target and works through a scheme, selling everyone whatever suits the bank. There is no such scheme - I have not seen one in any bank - and the economics argue against it. A satisfied client brings in new money and friends; a dissatisfied one withdraws money and talks the people around him out of it. Selling unsuitable products is simply unprofitable for a bank.
What happens is this. Every product is designed for a particular client profile. A structured product with full capital protection is for someone ready to start investing but afraid of losses. It carries a high margin for the bank and solves a real problem for the client: capital is protected and there is a chance to earn on the growth of an asset. An honest win-win.
The instruction from management is not «take this product to everyone» but «take it only to those it genuinely suits». That is what risk profiling and investment profiling exist for.
Then the arithmetic, by way of example. Out of ten target clients, three should notionally have agreed. The banker's competence fell short of explaining the product - two agreed. He goes looking for the third across the rest of the client base, where the product is no longer a full fit. And there, out of fear of rejection, he smooths the corners: asked «can I exit early», he answers «yes» - without adding anything about the bid side of the order book.
Mis-selling is born neither of greed nor of a scheme. It is born of one client missing from the target audience.
How it ends. The typical scenario: about six months later the client decides to withdraw the money and discovers he cannot do it without losing a significant part of his capital. He files a complaint, and the quality development unit reviews the employee's actions.
If the manager erred and the client was misled, the bank looks for a way to close the matter - up to buying the required number of units from the client so that he exits without loss.
If the employee explained everything correctly and the client forgot, the bank will not say «nothing can be done» - no client-centric bank talks that way. The wording will be softer: the review found no violation, we are working on the possibility of an early exit, we will let you know when there is a solution. Corners are smoothed here too, only now on the bank's side.
It rarely reaches court.
What to take away from this
First. A spread is a fee. Not «that's the rate», but a charge for the transaction that simply has not been itemised. Start comparing your bank's rate with the central bank's rate, and conversion acquires a price.
Second. There is no such thing as a free banking service. There are services you pay for not with a payment, but with a rate, a spread or a deduction inside a product.
Third. Your terms depend on your behaviour, not on your balance. Two clients with identical deposits cost the bank different amounts, and the offers they receive differ.
And three questions worth asking out loud:
- What do I need to do to move up a tier? Which tier you are in now, the app already shows. The conditions for moving up are a concrete, verifiable answer - and your spread and your fees depend on it.
- Why did you bring this to me specifically? This tests whether you are a target client for the product.
- Under what conditions will I be unable to exit? Exactly the place where corners get smoothed.
And a fourth, uncomfortable but the most useful of all: «And what is in it for you?» The answers «there is nothing in it for me» and «it's just my job» sound like charity, and charity does not exist inside a commercial organisation. An honest answer sounds different - I quote it in full, because it is how I answer myself:
«You buy the product, at maturity you see the return, you are satisfied - you bring in new money, you bring your friends and you recommend me. You are better off, I am better off. And the reverse: if I misled you and you did not earn, you withdraw the money, you do not recommend me, you speak badly of me. And my career ends.»
Answered that way, the person across the table has tied his own benefit to your result. Answered evasively, he is not prepared to say what happens to him if you lose.
And finally, the most important part
When a client jumps from bank to bank chasing the rate, sooner or later the bank works out that the relationship is purely transactional and that this client is permanently in the red. After that it happens by itself: funding terms stop improving, the attractive deposit rate is no longer offered, and the banks where you used to place money are no longer waiting for you.
An entrepreneur understands this logic well in relationships with suppliers. With a bank it works the same way: you look for the points where the arrangement is profitable for both sides.
There are no bad banking products, in my view. There are products unsuited to a particular client.
Sources: Bank of Russia, «Banking sector» reviews for Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. Frank RG, «Premium banking in Russia 2025». IFRS statements of Sber, VTB and T-Technologies for 2025. Moscow Exchange and yuan quotations as of 28 August 2026; bank rates from bankiros.ru.
This is not individual investment advice.
Rafail Kasymov - Senior Managing Director in the Private Banking division of one of the largest banks in the country. Every day I see how wealthy clients manage their capital. I write about putting your own money in order and running it by the same rules - and about how banks work from the inside.