The financial crisis of 1998 in Russia promoted stirring up of recourse redistribution process between credit organizations within competitive interplay, which intensified the evolution on the market of bank services. The situation arisen is unique, for it allows to observe considerable structural variations of bank branch, taking place naturally, within a short period of time.
The purpose of the present work is the studying of the Russian banking system evolution on two levels: both as a separate bank within common economic space, and groups of banks, similar on volumes and specificity of operations.
Dynamics of the system was studied with two attended methods. One method considered the groups (classes) bounds fixed and analyzed banks movements between classes. The other fixed accessory to classes and analyzed its movement trajectory as a whole. The evolution of the inner structure of classes and the whole system was determined by the results of comparing data of both methods.
In the work there was used Uralvneshtorgbank database on the 700 largest banks for the period from 01.01.1999 to 01.05.2000 (monthly). The classification was carried out by method of potential functions in room of four aggregated signs. Those signs reflect integrally the bank balance state, that counts 170 indices. In the structure of potential functions, differentiating banks, each bank has its own factor of enclosure into the class.
Results of the two approaches were compared according to accessory of banks to classes of the old structure (the first approach), and to factors of enclosure to the class of the new structure (the second approach). Thus, there were differentiated situations, when some bank moved to another class, and when there had place the movement of a whole group of banks.
Results of the investigation visually demonstrate, that within the period from January 1999 to May 2000 there had place an active evolutionary process affected a considerable number of banks. It is characteristic of the considerable number of them to extend their recourse base. In the report there are discussed different conduct types of separate banks and their groups.