Losses were not taken into account in credit holidays - Newspaper Kommersant No. 179 (7380) dated 09/28/2022
The deputies planned to adopt a law on credit holidays for participants in a special military operation (SVO) in three readings at once, but failed. The key question was at whose expense debts on loans of dead borrowers will be written off. The Ministry of Finance offers banks to do this at their own expense and does not plan to allocate from budget funds. Bankers are predictably against.
A bill on credit holidays for members of the SVO who fell under the mobilization and employees under the contract (see "Kommersant" dated September 23) was adopted by the State Duma on September 27 in the first reading. According to it, these categories of citizens, if they have a loan, are given the right to stop payments or reduce them for the duration of their service.
According to one of the authors of the bill, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma's financial committee, the document was supposed to be adopted as soon as possible, perhaps even in three readings at once. However, during the hearings, one of the provisions of the law caused a lively discussion - the document provides for writing off the loan to the borrower in the event of his death.
“By the second reading, we will clearly state that if a person died or became a disabled person of the first group, then, accordingly, he does not pay and these debts are not shifted to anyone,” Anatoly Aksakov explained.
Deputy Finance Minister Aleksey Moiseev added that this write-off will be at the expense of banks, not the budget. “As for the budget line, it is not supposed to be written off (at the expense of the budget.— "Kommersant"), it is assumed that this will be done at the expense of banks," the official of the news agency was quoted as saying. "As the Minister of Defense said, we have 25 million people fall into this pool (mobilization resource.— "Kommersant"), but if banks want to stop working with 25 million working, young, healthy citizens, then I don't know who they will work with then."
As a result, the bill was not considered on Tuesday even in the second reading, and the working group was actively preparing amendments. As Anatoly Aksakov told Kommersant, the deputies will try to pass the law in the second and third readings on September 28.
Meanwhile, the question at whose expense loans will be written off remains acute, since the law has a retroactive effect and applies to all participants in the SVO. As a source in the banking market explained to Kommersant, the point is not even the write-off of loans to the dead, which, as he hopes, will be few, but the increased risk of loans to everyone who could potentially be called up for mobilization. “At any moment, a loan that looks absolutely reliable can become risky if the borrower is called,” he says.
Alexey MoiseevDeputy Minister of Finance, September 27:
“As for the budget line, it is not expected ... this (credit write-off.— "b") will be done at the expense of the banks.”
According to the NBKI, over the past year, citizens aged 30-40 accounted for more than 45% of all mortgage loans, another 20% accounted for borrowers under 30 years old, totaling more than 65%, and according to the Central Bank at the beginning of September, citizens' debt on housing loans exceeded 13 trillion rubles. A little less than 12 trillion rubles. accounts for unsecured loans, in which the share of citizens under 40 years of age exceeds 50%. Even taking into account the fact that part of this loan portfolio is issued to women, and part to citizens who are not subject to mobilization, all the same, according to experts, loans worth trillions of rubles remain at risk.
The banking community is seriously concerned about the prospect of increasing the riskiness of the loan portfolio.
As Andrey Emelin, head of the National Council of the Financial Market, told Kommersant, such a scheme should be based on a public-private partnership that distributes losses in a certain proportion between the state and banks.
He added that the banking community is waiting for the Bank of Russia and the deputies to promptly adjust the regulatory framework to compensate for the additional burden on the capital, standards and reserves of banks after the adoption of the law. The Central Bank did not answer the question of what kind of support the regulator is ready to provide to banks.
“It will be especially necessary to assess the applicability of insurance mechanisms for protecting borrowers in the current situation,” says Andrey Emelin. Alexey Voylukov, Vice President of the Association of Banks of Russia, draws attention to the fact that in this case, insurance issued by borrowers will not work, since one of the main insurance conditions is that all risks for which compensation is paid are realized in a normal situation, and not in force majeure conditions. In his opinion, the Bank of Russia could also provide banks with relief, starting from cheaper long-term resources and ending with relaxations on standards and contributions to the DIA.