Microloans are getting more expensive – Newspaper Kommersant No. 61 (7506) of 04/10/2023

Against the background of the crisis in the economy, tightening of regulation and the withdrawal from the Russian Federation of some large advertising platforms, microfinance organizations (MFIs) faced an increase in the cost of attracting clients – depending on the company, the growth for each new client amounted to 10-30%. And in 2023, the value of a customer will continue to rise for the industry amid declining demand from citizens at the same time as the approval funnel narrows.

According to Unicom, the cost of one advertising lead for MFIs in February amounted to 2.57 thousand rubles. This is almost a quarter more than a year earlier. Companies surveyed by Kommersant confirm a 10-30% increase in value. “Such aggressive dynamics is due to a combination of negative factors, such as a reduction in advertising inventory due to the departure of Meta and Google, changes in legislation regarding the labeling of advertising for financial services, tightening regulation by the Central Bank and general negative sentiment among borrowers,” explains Dmitry Afrikanov, CEO of Unicom. “The cost of customer acquisition in 2023 will show an increase of 10-20%.”

The increase in the cost of attraction will continue even without new shock events in the advertising market. “MFIs as a business are faced with the task of showing high-quality growth with a minimum level of defaults, and such traffic cannot initially be cheap,” explains Elena Stratieva, director of SRO MiR. Already at the beginning of last year, the trend affected the marketing strategies of most MFIs: more than a third of companies reported that the marketing budget had grown, SROs say.

According to Mrs. Stratieva, the average annual budget for marketing in the industry is within 50 million rubles. If we remove the indicators of the largest companies from the data, then 80% of the market has a marketing budget of about 10-11 million rubles. in year. According to the Central Bank, about 80% of loans are issued online, this segment is key to finding new customers.

The situation is aggravated by the drop in demand for microloans from clients. According to Roman Makarov, General Director of MFC Zaimer, the first quarter of 2023 did not bring any revival to the microfinance market: the number of applications received almost coincided with that recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022 – just over 3 million. Against the backdrop of a slowdown in the economy, demand will moderately low throughout 2023, the company is confident.

The number of applications from primary clients decreased by 13% year-on-year in the first quarter, Andrey Ponomarev, CEO of the financial online platform Webbankir, confirms the trend. At the same time, demand from repeat customers grew by a third over the same period, he adds. “It will be more and more difficult for MFIs to find high-quality clients, due to the fact that the marginality of microfinance business will fall against the backdrop of lower interest rates, and many clients are overloaded with debt,” Marat Abbyasov, commercial director of MigCredit, describes the situation on the market. meeting all the requirements of both the company itself and the regulator will be quite difficult.” Therefore, obviously, competition for good leads will intensify, which, of course, will push up the cost of attraction, companies are interested in compensating for lost profits, continues Mr. Abbyasov.

As a result, market participants are ready to overpay for quality customers, including banking ones, Andrey Greznev, Marketing Director of MoneyMan, agrees. “If today, for example, 100 persons who meet the requirements of 200 creditors need a loan, the struggle between the latter will unfold precisely in the marketing field, and the denser it is, the higher the price will be. Companies are forced to look for new sources of traffic, including more actively developing interaction with CPA networks,” Elena Malysheva, Commercial Director of Summit Group, gives an example.

MFIs can only recoup the growing costs of attracting clients by increasing efficiency, reducing costs, expanding the range of additional products and sources of non-credit earnings, Mr. Abbyasov is sure.

Polina Trifonova