After Alta Banka, Serbia Needs Bank Facts From the NBS, Not Rumours

Within a week of Alta Banka losing its licence, the conversation about Serbian banks has moved from one failed lender to the bank chosen to pay its depositors. Claims about Poštanska štedionica have come from politicians, from parts of the media and from anonymous sources; the bank has denied the most serious one and asked the National Bank of Serbia for extra supervision. On Thursday the Student List, which will soon form a government, asked citizens to stay calm. It was the right message. It is not enough.

Calm is built on information

Depositors are told to rely on verified information, but very little has been verified in public. The NBS has introduced enhanced liquidity monitoring at Poštanska štedionica, according to media reports, yet it has not explained the measure itself. The payout contract for Alta's insured depositors was signed on Thursday without a start date. Governor Jorgovanka Tabaković has not given a public account of Alta's collapse, Danas and BIRN reported this week. In that silence, every claim travels further than it deserves.

Everyone has a part to play

The incoming majority should be careful too. Its own figures have made claims about attempts to move money that the bank called untrue, and on Thursday it again suggested, without giving evidence, that people close to the outgoing government had pressured the bank. If there is evidence, it belongs with prosecutors and supervisors; if there is not, repeating it does depositors no favours. The outgoing authorities, for their part, should not treat questions about how Alta was supervised as an attack: a central bank that explains itself is stronger, not weaker.

What would help this week

Three things would do more than any appeal. First, the Deposit Insurance Agency should publish the payout date and procedure as soon as possible, because uncertainty about access to insured money is what turns worry into queues. Second, the NBS should publish basic liquidity indicators for the banking system and say plainly what its extra supervision of Poštanska štedionica involves. Third, the governor should answer questions in public about what the NBS knew about Alta and when.

Alta and Poštanska štedionica together hold less than a tenth of the market, and insured deposits are backed by a fund of more than a billion euros. That is a reassuring case to make — but it has to be made, with numbers, by the institution responsible for it.