Bankruptcy as salvation: the debt load of Russians exceeded 25 trillion rubles

Yekaterina Maksimova

Over the year, the credit burden of Russian citizens increased by 1.5 trillion rubles - up to 25.47 trillion. A year ago, in July 2021, the total debt of individuals reached 23.9 trillion rubles. Chairman of the Council of Judges of the Russian Federation Viktor Momotov even then called this figure astronomical. Momotov noted a year ago: loans are repaid poorly, which threatens borrowers with mass bankruptcy, instability, uncertainty, and social tension (TASS quote).

The portfolio of borrowings of Russians at the moment looks like this: consumer loans (43.30%), mortgages (30.60%), credit cards (15.90%), car loans (8.90%) and microcredits (1.30%). Accordingly, the lion's share of loans falls on consumer loans and mortgages.

For all types of lending, except for microcredits, the percentage of overdue payments has increased over the past six months.

According to NBCH data provided to Novye Izvestia, the share of loans overdue by more than 90 days for six months (from January 1 to July 1, 2022) changed as follows:

Consumer loans. Overdue as of July 1 26.40% (23.80% as of January 1).

Credit cards. Delay on July 1 8% (7% on January 1).

Auto loans. Overdue as of 1 July 6.80% (5.80% as of 1 January).

Mortgage. Overdue on 1 July 1.30% (1.20% on 1 January).

Microloans. Delay on July 1 34% (34, 10% on January 1).

Financial analyst, Doctor of Economic Sciences Konstantin Selyanin believes that these figures are not yet catastrophic, but in their dynamics they are already clearly alarming. The expert also drew attention to the fact that the absolute figures in trillions of rubles do not give a complete and understandable picture. Another indicator is more important - the share of disposable income that households spend directly on servicing loans.

“The Central Bank, unfortunately, stopped publishing such data. Even if this indicator remained at the level of 10-12%, it is already threatening. This means that loans have become the second item of expenditure after taxes, ahead of the cost of housing and communal services and other expenses. Yes, many do not have loans, and some families have debt load of 30%, 50% and even 80% of family income. People with such a load will stop paying. There may be a collapse in the second half of the year”, - Konstantin Selyanin does not exclude.

As for the share of servicing loan payments, as of January 1, 2022, according to the Central Bank, the level of debt burden of citizens for all types of loans and loans reached a record 10.6%.

Russian borrowers can no longer cope with the debt burden. According to Fedresurs, in the first half of 2022, 121,313 Russians (including individual entrepreneurs) were declared bankrupt. This is 37.8% more than in the same period in 2021.

In the second quarter of this year alone, 67,133 citizens of the Russian Federation received bankrupt status, which is 37.8% more than in the second quarter of last year.

Fedresurs analytics show that Russians in the vast majority of cases are in a hurry to declare themselves bankrupt, without waiting for a trial initiated by creditors. So, in the first half of the year, 95.2% of debtors voluntarily announced their bankruptcy (95% for the same period in 2021). Lenders initiated 3.5% (was 3.9%) of processes, the Federal Tax Service of Russia 1.3% (was 1.1%).

The leaders in the number of bankrupt citizens this year were the Moscow Region (an increase of 28% compared to the first half of 2021), Moscow (an increase of 16.7%), the Krasnodar Territory (an increase of 31.3%), Bashkortostan (an increase of 46%) and the Sverdlovsk Region (an increase of 43.5%), that is, the number of self-bankruptcies was demonstrated by fairly strong regions of the Russian Federation.

Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Association "Interregional Self-Regulatory Organization of Arbitration Managers" Natalia Tsoi told Novye Izvestia that in the second half of the year, especially in the second quarter, the number of requests from courts related to bankruptcy cases of individuals increased markedly. “The statistics have not been let down yet, but we are talking about a fairly noticeable increase in court requests”, - Natalia Tsoi noted.

The practice of extrajudicial bankruptcy of citizens in the second quarter also showed a significant increase - by 1.6 times compared to the same period in 2021. For three months, from April to June, multifunctional centers (MFCs) published 1,651 messages about initiating out-of-court bankruptcy procedures for citizens. For the first half of the year, the number of initiations of extrajudicial procedures increased by 32.2% compared to the same period in 2021 to 2933 applications.

For several months of this year, the Russians collectively tried to write off their debts in the amount of more than 3.24 billion rubles.

At the same time, the Russians borrowed much less in the spring. The failure in lending, which is predictable, was associated with protective bank rates, which jumped after the key rate.

According to the NBCH, in the first half of the year, the volume of consumer loans issued decreased by 49.8% to 0.88 trillion rubles (pandemic January-May 2021 - 1.74 trillion rubles). The car lending segment collapsed by 40.9% - 257.3 billion rubles were issued against 435.7 billion in the period from January to May 2021.

By June, the situation had changed: borrowers again began to "storm" the banks, despite the fact that in May the average weighted rates in retail lending were at the level of up to 26% per annum, follows from the data of the Central Bank.

“Primary data for June allow us to count on a change in dynamics and a confident recovery in retail lending, especially after the reduction of the key rate of the Bank of Russia, easing the conditions for additional government measures to stimulate mortgages. At the same time, banks remain cautious in selecting borrowers, preferring applicants with a high personal credit rating. The number of applications is also at a reduced level compared to the beginning of the year. Therefore, despite the fact that we can say that the peak of the crisis is behind us, it is necessary to predict the market recovery to the levels of the beginning of the year with great caution”, - Alexey Volkov, marketing director of the NBCH, commented to Novye Izvestia.

Recall that mortgages in June have already shown signs of recovery after the failed performance in the spring. The number of issued mortgage loans almost doubled: 68.6 thousand mortgage agreements were issued in June. The total amount of lending is 251.5 billion rubles. The increase compared to May was 78.5%.

Yevgeny Romanov, a leading analyst for bank ratings at the Expert RA agency, notes that although the trend for the recovery of mortgage lending has begun to take shape, the indicators have not yet reached the pre-crisis levels of February 2022. “We can talk about the formation of a stable trend only after the end of the summer period”, - Yevgeny Romanov believes.

If we compare the results of mortgage lending with the indicators of the first half of last year, then the issuance of loans for the six months of 2022 remained at a negative level: in ruble terms, the issuance of mortgages to Russians decreased by 54.4%, in quantitative terms - by 61.65%.