Banks are not ready for self-restraint of borrowers

Bankers are asking to be excluded from the channels for transmitting clients’ requests to self-prohibit receiving loans. The bill adopted in the first reading proposed using the capabilities of the State Services portal and the MFC, but banks and MFOs were added to the list in the second reading. According to human rights activists, the expansion will benefit citizens. Bankers are afraid of the costs of updating the infrastructure, as well as the risks of abuse by their employees.

The National Council of the Financial Market (NCFM) sent a letter to the State Duma (Kommersant got acquainted with it) with a request to remove from the amendments to the laws “On Credit Histories” and “On Consumer Credit (Loan)” being prepared for the second reading the provisions on the possibility for citizens to apply application for self-prohibition of obtaining a loan through banks and microfinance organizations. Based on the results of the first reading, the bill provided for the use only of the State Services portal and the MFC. As a source familiar with the discussion of the bill told Kommersant, the amendment on filing applications through banks and microfinance organizations was introduced at the proposal of the presidential administration.

Human rights activists believe that expanding the possibilities for self-prohibition is justified. According to the head of the regional block of the project “For the Rights of Borrowers” ​​of the Popular Front, Galaktion Kuchava, the number of requests from victims who were forced by fraudsters to take out loans and borrowings or in whose name debt obligations were issued increases annually by 15–20%. “The consumer should have the widest choice of channels to establish self-restraint: banks, MFOs, MFCs, and State Services,” he notes. At the same time, according to him, taking into account the law on compensation for funds stolen by fraudsters that comes into force in July, it will be more profitable for creditors to self-restrict the client than to carry out the set of measures provided for by this law.

The banking community reacted negatively to the proposed innovation. As stated in the letter from the NSFR, such a decision would lead to significant risks for both individuals and financial organizations. The proposed version of the law requires banks to “implement and constantly maintain the functionality of several options at once, including very expensive, but extremely rarely used in banking practice.” As the head of the National Financial Markets Service Andrey Emelin explained, in the first version a simple way was implemented: if the client submits a ban remotely, then through the State Services portal, if in person, then through the MFC. And banks, according to the amendments to the bill, according to him, are obliged to immediately implement all options for submitting an application and signing it with all existing types of digital signature, which costs large banks billions of rubles.

In addition, the law “may create conditions for the emergence of manipulative practices on the part of unscrupulous employees of financial organizations.” A bank employee can convince a client to put a ban after receiving a loan and state that the ban can be lifted only after the loan expires, Mr. Emelin gives an example. “This may prevent the borrower from refinancing with another bank – the ban itself can be lifted, but its presence will tell other banks that it is pointless to send refinancing offers to the client,” explains the expert.

There remains a chance that in the final version of the bill there will be no banks and microfinance organizations as channels for submitting applications for self-banned loans. As Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Finance Committee, told Kommersant, this was previously agreed upon with all interested parties. “Both the risk of misselling and the high costs of banks for updating the infrastructure were taken into account,” he explained. However, as stated in the Bank of Russia, “when making a decision, it is important to take into account the balance of ensuring the convenience of application channels and the level of potential costs for the formation of infrastructure – a final decision on this issue has not been made.”

Maxim Builov