Marketplaces in every home – Newspaper Kommersant No. 216 (7417) dated 11/22/2022

Financial marketplaces face a range of challenges when trying to launch mortgage sales. Market participants talk about both legal and organizational issues, including the unwillingness of banks to cooperate in the implementation of profitable products. The Central Bank is ready to discuss the changes in regulation proposed by marketplaces.

Representatives of financial marketplaces interviewed by Kommersant spoke about problems with launching mortgage sales through their services. Although many market participants have been working for up to two years and are distributing other loan products, no one has a mortgage.

Dmitry Grebnev, General Director of Open Financial Marketplace JSC (OFM), emphasizes that a mortgage transaction is one of the most complex on the market, it involves many participants, including a bank, an insurer, an appraiser, a developer, and divisions of Rosreestr. “All of them must be presented in one form or another on the financial platform, integrated with it in order to be able to carry out a fully digital transaction,” emphasizes the top manager. According to Igor Alutin, Managing Director of the Finuslugi project of the Moscow Exchange, all products presented on the platform require full integration with the IT systems of a bank or, for example, an insurance company, so that the consumer “has the most seamless and short client path.”

There are also legal restrictions. “Currently, from our point of view, it is impossible to register a pledge on the platform,” Mr. Grebnev notes. He considers it necessary to amend the relevant law or issue a Bank of Russia regulation regulating “registration of collateral on the platform as an accompanying operation.” Dmitry Grebnev also considers it appropriate to cancel the ban on transferring funds in favor of third parties, as this creates an additional stage of transferring funds to the developer.

The mortgage segment is one of the largest in the consumer lending market. According to Frank RG, the average monthly volume of such loans amounted to about 370 billion rubles, which is comparable to the issuance of cash loans. In addition, mortgages have the largest average bill in retail. That is why she is interested in marketplaces. Commission “Sravni.ru” and “Finuslug” from each loan agreement is 1.5-3% of the amount, “Banki.ru” – 2.5-3%, OFM – 4.5 thousand rubles.

Marketplaces claim that customers “will also benefit.” Searching for a mortgage through an intermediary will be of interest to those who “important to see the whole set of alternatives on the market at once and save time,” says Kristina Khachikyan, Business Development Director of Banki.ru OFP. Even a fraction of a percentage difference for a mortgage loan provides a significant benefit, they add to the OFM.

The full-fledged implementation of this task “depends on the position of the dominant banks, without which an adequate product cannot be made,” admits Aleksey Gribkov, deputy general director of Sravni. Cooperation with marketplaces makes it possible for banks to receive applications from clients who would otherwise “apply for a mortgage either to a payroll bank, or to the one recommended by the developer,” Mr. Grebnev emphasizes. However, the interest of market leaders in cooperation is still low. For example, Sberbank is not connected to any of the marketplaces. The bank points to its own mortgage platform, Domclick, on which transactions are carried out, including on digital mortgages.

The Bank of Russia looks at the desire of marketplaces rather favorably and admits the possibility of modifying the relevant law if market participants see barriers to mortgage transactions.

At the same time, Rusipoteka’s chief expert Sergei Gordeiko says that the appearance of an additional intermediary makes the deal more expensive for the client. Mr. Gordeiko generally considers it unnecessary and even risky to simplify access to such complex and expensive products: “Why does the Central Bank introduce a barrier in the form of qualified investors in the stock market, while in the housing market they are ready to admit all buyers and market participants to online transactions?”

Olga Sherunkova