Prohibition on public services to take loans to oneself: how it will work

In order to protect themselves from potential scammers and avoid a divorce for money, Russians will be able to independently and voluntarily establish a ban on issuing loans to themselves. Such a mechanism is spelled out in the bill, which proposes to adopt the Central Bank. According to experts, the measure is conceptually absolutely correct, but in the technical and legal sense it needs to be improved, since it does not provide 100% protection against intruders.

The initiative passed interagency coordination and received market support. The document will soon be submitted to the State Duma. In accordance with the bill, a citizen can put a ban on issuing loans to himself on the State Services portal, this mark will automatically go to the Credit History Bureau, and it will be seen by all banks requesting information from the BKI when receiving a loan application on behalf of this citizen.

As planned by the Central Bank, you can check the corresponding box or refuse it an unlimited number of times, and take a loan – two days after the withdrawal. This period was not chosen by chance: the regulator calls it a “cooling off period, a point of communication break” with scammers, when a person realizes that he is faced with an attempt to deceive.

The mechanism of voluntary self-prohibition is aimed at solving a truly intractable problem that has poisoned the lives of a great many people. So, only in the third quarter of last year, cyber fraudsters stole about 4 billion rubles from bank accounts. In 2022, there was an explosive growth in spoofed calls from mobile numbers – in a year there were almost 35 times more of them. Very often, the callers tried to “hang” a loan on a person using social engineering methods. Or the loan was issued without the knowledge of the “borrower” at all, if the swindlers somehow got access to his personal data.

And recently a new two-stage scheme of deceiving citizens was revealed. First, the scammer calls the potential victim on behalf of the bank and reports a pre-approved loan. A few hours later, the person is contacted again, thanked for applying for a loan product and asked to evaluate the quality of service.

When the “borrower”, taken by surprise, begins to panic and deny his involvement in what is happening, the operator switches the call supposedly to the “police” or “bank security service”. Well, there the unfortunate person is asked to assist in the capture of intruders and transfer money to a “safe account”. This technique, often used in marketing and conscientious selling, is known as the “sequence trap.”

“The losses of citizens from such actions amount to hundreds of millions and billions of rubles,” says Artem Deev, head of the analytical department at Amarkets. – Often people do not even know that the criminals received a bank loan for their passport data. The new tool will, in principle, eliminate the situation with fraud. It can be used, for example, by children of elderly parents, who, with their consent (and in their presence), will put up a ban on issuing loans at the State Services.

The option of two days fixed in the bill is also important, after which you can again take a loan without much fear. After all, scammers make you make rash decisions, push you, rush you. And here a person can change his mind in a couple of days and consult with someone … So, in Deev’s opinion, self-prohibition is a real working tool designed to protect citizens from illegal steps of third parties.

However, not all experts share this optimism. “The self-prohibition mechanism will complicate the execution of new loans, but is unlikely to greatly reduce the activity of unscrupulous market participants,” said Vladislav Antonov, financial analyst at BitRiver. – While the authorities are trying to coordinate and adopt the bill, someone is developing new schemes for taking possession of other people’s money. There is no 100% guarantee of protection, if only because there are different ways to gain access to the personal account of individuals on the State Services, where you can uncheck the box.

Its security needs to be strengthened: it is necessary to introduce two-factor user identification on the Gosuslug website (so that confirmation via SMS code is required when performing an operation), as is implemented on popular crypto exchanges. In addition, the state should provide more information to citizens on protection in the digital environment.”

The measure is absolutely justified, but clearly overdue, argues financial analyst Sergei Drozdov: too many people in the country managed to “get on the money”, and someone’s fate turned out to be broken.

In Russia, a practice has developed that allows you to get any loan from a bank or multifunctional center literally at the snap of your fingers (with one click), but even an ordinary consumer loan of 100 thousand rubles should not be so affordable. First of all, pensioners and other unprotected segments of the population suffer, and from the actions of both fraudsters and banks.

“Banks should take a more responsible approach to the issue of lending,” says Drozdov. – And the client, in turn, must visit the office physically, and not online. And there they should have at least a short conversation with a person, ask what caused the desire to take a loan, whether someone incomprehensibly called him on behalf of the bank.