The high credit season is postponed – Newspaper Kommersant No. 210 (7411) of 11/14/2022

After the failure in September, Russians’ interest in borrowed funds began to gradually recover. Growth was outlined in October in the segment of both microloans and cash loans. The positive trend continued in November as well. However, not all lenders are confident that this increase signals the start of the traditional high pre-holiday season, as incoming applications deteriorate in terms of scoring.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the study of the Unicom ecosystem, whose analysts assessed the demand for borrowed funds from citizens. It is too early to talk about a full recovery after the September failure (in September, the Russians applied for microloans by 15% less than in August, for cash loans, the indicator was lower by 17%).

However, according to the study, in October the number of requests for microloans increased by 6% in monthly comparison, consumer loans – by 1.5%. The results of the first two weeks of November allow us to say that this month the trend will be similar.

The end of the year in the lending market is traditionally considered a high season. For comparison: last year, the growth in requests for microloans grew in October by 17% compared to September, for cash loans – by 5%, Unicom notes. However, in the fourth quarter, experts do not expect a serious increase in issuance. Even with a more or less stable situation in the economy, lenders will be interested not in increasing portfolios at a high pace, but in growth due to quality customers, explains Unicom CEO Dmitry Afrikanov.

And consumers themselves will be cautious about returning to their usual behavior patterns. According to the study, only every seventh client fills out an application for obtaining borrowed funds, of those who were interested in the conditions a year earlier, this was every fourth.

Lenders are seeing different dynamics. For example, Rosbank’s growth in applications for cash loans in October amounted to 3% compared to September, while in November the bank, on the contrary, faced some slowdown. RNKB does not see a sharp increase in interest in borrowed funds: the average monthly demand at the bank for consumer loans in the fall of 2022 remains approximately at the same level. On the eve of the New Year holidays, the RNKB also does not expect a sharp demand for lending. In Eqvanta Group, the growth in the number of average daily requests from unique new customers in October amounted to 13%. Further growth in November is unlikely to follow, but the company, on the contrary, hopes for a December, pre-holiday, increase in customer demand, notes Ion Boloboshencu, Risk Director at Eqvanta Group. In the first week of November, VTB issued cash loans increased by a third compared to the first week of October, and the bank expects the trend to continue until the end of the year.

At the same time, in November, there was a trend towards a decrease in the level of approval against the background of a deterioration in the quality of the incoming flow of applications, says Alexei Perederiy, Director of the Risk Management Department at Migcredit MFC.

The approval rate in October compared to September decreased by 2 percentage points for new clients. And its growth is not expected in the near future: household incomes are not growing,” adds Sergey Vesovshchuk, CEO of Moneyman. “You should not count on a pronounced high season this year either.” Companies are ready to spend money on attracting only high-quality clients, says Leonid Kornilov, chairman of the board of directors of the fintech group Finbridge (see “Kommersant” dated November 9). With new clients, the approach to work is cautious, confirms Anna Zdanevich, head of financial institutions at DRT.

On the one hand, this year there have already been two distinct periods of tightening scoring, in March and September, so “some softening of lending conditions by players before the end of the year is not ruled out,” says Ivan Uklein, director of banking ratings at Expert RA. At the same time, he clarifies, “the dynamics of migration flows” may have a restraining effect on the issuance of funds in the fourth quarter.

Polina Trifonova