RESO has picked Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA), Citibank, VTB Capital, Sberbank CIB, Renaissance Capital, Deutsche bank and Societe Generale among the banks to arrange the issue, sources said.

RESO did not reply to a Reuters request for immediate comment.

If the IPO goes ahead, the company would be Russia's first publicly traded insurance company. It is majority controlled by the Sarkisov family via a number of companies.

French insurer AXA indirectly controls around a third of RESO.

(Reporting by Olga Popova; additional reporting by Tatiana Voronova; writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Jason Neely)