The article discusses the difficult and contradictory process of creation of the new banking system during perestroika and how this new system found its level in the economy of the Yeltsin’s Russia at the beginning of the 1990s. The author supposes that the mistakes made in the course of creation of the Soviet (and then Russian) banking system subsequently affected the work of the country’s financial and banking sector. To overcome the crisis he suggests funding enterprises and companies bypassing commercial banks.