The banks located in Ural Federal District managed to raise the volume of investments by private individuals by 38.5% last year, including a 10% increase in October-December 2007, the Deposit Insurance Agency says.

Sverdlovsk Region-based banks did particularly well, as their natural person deposit portfolio went up by 45%, which is better than the results reached by the banks based in Tyumen Region (34.8%), Chelyabinsk Region (33.1%), or Kurgan Region (24.1%).

Only the banks of Sverdlovsk and Tyumen Regions experienced some natural person deposit portfolio growth (by 12.6% and 12.9% respectively) in the last quarter of 2007, while the figures went down by 5.1% and 1.4% in Kurgan and Chelyabinsk Regions, respectively.