Retail lending is shrinking – Newspaper Kommersant No. 207 (7408) of 09.11.

In October, the issuance of retail loans decreased for the first time after a serious decline in April, provoked by the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and the ensuing wave of sanctions, follows from Frank RG data. Experts attribute the drop to the fact that against the backdrop of an outflow of liquidity and rising risks, mobilization provoked an increase in rates and a tightening of scoring: banks were extremely cautious, reduced amounts and reduced the amount of approval.

In October, the growth of retail lending in Russia, which lasted five months in a row, was interrupted. According to Frank RG, in the past month, the volume of loans in monetary terms decreased by 7.3% compared to September and by 14.6% compared to last year’s October. At the same time, the number of issuance increased from 3.3 million to 3.6 million units.

In total, in January-October 2022, banks issued 8.16 trillion rubles. loans (decrease by 29% year-on-year).

The sample includes cash loans, mortgages, auto loans, and point-of-sale (POS) loans. In terms of the number of issues, only the POS segment and cash loans grew – by 16.1%, to 1.3 million, and by 7.8%, to 2.16 million, respectively. In monetary terms, commodity loans grew in October – by 30.7%, to 37.5 billion rubles.

Mortgages sank the most: the traditional driver of retail decreased by 12.8% compared to September, to 454.1 billion rubles, and by almost 5% in terms of the number of loans, to 130.5 thousand. Auto loans decreased by 2.4% to RUB 60.6 billion.

The largest credit bureaus – NBKI, Scoring Bureau, OKB – have no data for October yet. Preliminary estimates indicate that the October issue, “indeed, is expected to be slightly lower than the level of September,” Alexei Volkov, marketing director of the NBKI, confirmed to Kommersant.

Banks also recognize the decline in lending. Sberbank already in September saw an expected slight decline in disbursements after a record volume in August, but in October “retail lending almost recovered.” The decrease in issuance was confirmed by the IBC: “In October, we recorded a decline in the issuance of consumer loans to individuals by 15% compared to September.” At PSB, in October the number of applications for loans increased by 20% compared to September, while the volume of issuance “did not change significantly, which is associated with the risk control policy,” Rustam Rafikov, head of the bank’s loan products department, said.

There are single banks that are seeing growth. Thus, in HCF-Bank, the volume of issuance of non-targeted cash loans in October exceeded the volume of September by 1.2 times, says Andrey Spivakov, Chief Executive Officer of the bank. According to him, the values ​​of October last year, the issuance has not yet reached, but by the end of the year the bank hopes to restore volumes. In Novikombank, there is an increase by 4% against September, by 14% year-on-year.

An interlocutor of Kommersant in one of the banks calls the mobilization announced at the end of September the main reason for the decline in retail lending.

It provoked an increase in uncertainty and risks, along with the observed outflow of liquidity, which reduced the risk appetite of banks, a Kommersant source explains. As a result, he emphasizes, banks began to raise interest rates on loans, some of them brought to a barrage level.

HKF Bank turned out to be the most efficient. This is the only bank in the top 15 that raised the rate even before the beginning of October. The day after the announcement of the mobilization (it happened on September 21), the maximum rate at HCF-Bank increased immediately by 8.3 percentage points (p.p.), to 34.9%, Frank RG notes.

The massive increase in interest rates began in the first week of October, the company notes. Alfa-Bank, Gazprombank (GPB), Post-Bank, Raiffeisenbank, Rosbank, Sovcombank increased them by 0.5-6.0 p.p. .) and ICD (by 1.0 p.p.). In general, in October, these banks raised rates by 0.5–11.2 percentage points. In the mortgage segment, 13 of the top 15 banks raised rates (including Sberbank and VTB, see Kommersant on October 12), Alfa became the exception -bank, which raised them at the end of September, and Sovcombank, which did not change rates for three months.

Market participants and experts name other reasons besides mobilization.

Among other things, the decline in issuance was due to a decrease in the level of approval of loan applications by about 1–2 percentage points — “this may be due to both a decrease in risk appetite on the part of banks and a deterioration in the quality of the incoming flow of applications,” adds Alexey Volkov. Zenith Bank is talking about a decrease in demand for lending from the population “in the face of uncertainty.”

Against the backdrop of general uncertainty, borrowers of “good credit quality” do not seek to increase liabilities, Mr. Volkov confirms. According to him, this is evidenced by the dynamics of the average indicators of such an indicator of the quality of the credit history of borrowers as a personal credit rating (PCR). Recently, it has been gradually decreasing, followed by a drop in the level of approval for loan applications, the expert explains, “similar processes were observed in the spring, then the average RCC fell from 250 to 220 points, and the approval level fell from 30% to almost 20%.”

Of particular interest to risk assessment services was the interest in loans from men, if a man of military age applied for a loan for the first time and for large amounts, market participants say. At the same time, bankers are not officially recognized in tightening the assessment of the solvency of customers.

Sberbank just “regularly adapts its credit policy to the observed changes.” There are no additional scoring restrictions in HCF-Bank, the requirements for men have not changed, says Mr. Spivakov. The main purposes of obtaining cash loans at the bank are traditional – repairs, buying a car or real estate, significant family events, he emphasizes, “these expenses are not spontaneous, before receiving such loans, people carefully analyze their financial capabilities and responsibly treat their obligations.”

Neither participants nor experts expect a quick recovery in the retail lending market. According to Mr. Rafikov, the segment will not return to the dynamics of early 2022 until the first quarter of 2023.

Olga Sherunkova