at the end of May, the volume updated the record, reaching 1.77 billion rubles.

At the end of May, the volume of the crowdlending market updated a record, reaching 1.77 billion rubles. However, in recent months, there has been a slowdown in growth rates, which may be due to insufficient awareness of the tool for small and medium-sized businesses. Under such conditions, market participants are counting on state support.

According to Money Friends, at the end of May, the volume of funds raised in the crowdlending market updated its historical record, reaching 1.77 billion rubles. The indicators of the last three months were around 1.7 billion rubles, which is 2.5 times more than a year earlier.

After the rapid growth in the first quarter of this year, the pace slowed down, but market participants are confident that it is too early to talk about reaching the ceiling: the potential for lending to SMEs is high, and crowdlending now occupies a very small share of this segment. The level of penetration of crowdlending in revolving lending to small businesses will be 5-10% in the next five to seven years, said Yury Kolesnikov, a member of the expert council of the State Duma Committee on the financial market.

Healthy growth rates of 100-150% per year, he believes, higher ones “may carry additional risks for investors and infrastructure.” “Even the absence of any shocks will allow the market to grow organically at double-digit rates,” said Mark Savichenko, chief analyst at Ivolga Capital.

Since the beginning of the year, JetLend has held the leadership in the market – in five months, the amount of funding provided by the site has almost doubled, to 720 million rubles. “In order to grow by 300–400% per year, we need not only our own technology platform with a secondary market, active marketing, but also competitive rates for borrowers. JetLend lends to businesses at rates ranging from 11.9% to 35% per annum,” explains Roman Khoroshev, founder of the site.

However, not everyone agrees with this approach. “Aggressive expansion is fraught with risks in terms of portfolio quality. Moreover, there are no tools for managing them either on the part of the regulator or on the part of the investor. Reserves, as for banks, are impossible for platforms. It remains only to believe that the indicators of bad debts will not reach a critical level,” says Kirill Kosminsky, Executive Director of the Association of Investment Platform Operators. In any financial business, galloping growth rates cause reasonable alarms, Yuri Kolesnikov agrees.

JetLend itself claims to be “closely monitoring default rates and arrears.” The NPL1+ level has been in the range of 1.2–2% for many months, notes Roman Khoroshev. But according to other market participants, these indicators differ too much from the market average. The Central Bank did not answer Kommersant’s questions on the merits.

At the same time, the former long-term market leader, the Potok company, has not regained its position (see Kommersant on February 15). In May, the company financed transactions for 480 million rubles, showing an increase of 35% since the beginning of the year. “We are trying to balance growth and quality,” said Yury Popov, managing partner of Potok, “because we ourselves are the largest investor in our portfolio.” Kommersant’s interlocutors in the market believe that this approach is safe for both borrowers and investors, given the still insufficient development and regulation of scoring systems.

However, market participants hope for state support. “A slight slowdown is possible, given the lack of fundamentally stimulating factors: the industry consists of small fintech companies, and it is extremely difficult to promote a new tool only through their efforts,” points out Kirill Kosminsky. Systemic measures – tax incentives and embedding the mechanics of financing businesses and start-ups through crowd platforms at the level of each region, he is sure, would allow us to see a two-fold increase.

Polina Trifonova