By and large: banks have stopped lending to IT companies for new projects
Banks have stopped giving Russian IT companies loans for new projects, market participants told Izvestia. Because of this, many implementations, including in the sphere of import substitution, may be suspended, they warn. The reason is the growth of the Central Bank rate and the lack of IT-companies' assets that can be offered to banks as collateral. For end users, this may result in higher prices for goods and services, experts believe.
Why IT-companies stopped lending
Three participants of the Russian IT-market told Izvestia about the impossibility to obtain credit financing. According to one of them, the problem appeared about a month ago. Companies are either not granted loans or are offered to borrow at barrier rates - banks often explain this by the lack of available funds, says one of the interlocutors.
- The situation is very difficult for system integrators," says another source. - Large developers, who periodically have to close cash gaps with the help of loans, no one is now giving anything at favorable rates either.
All this leads to the fact that companies are forced to stop or slow down new IT projects, including in the field of import substitution (for example, the introduction of domestic software instead of foreign) and digital transformation, all three sources point out.
Problems with lending are observed not only in IT, but also in other industries, says a source in one of the high-tech companies. He did not specify which ones. "Izvestia" sent inquiries to cross-industry public organizations - "Business Russia" and "Opora Rossii".
- Money has become expensive, and "fair" loans for development to integrators, indeed, banks rarely give them lately," agrees Oleg Logvinov, CEO of Logvinov Consulting Service.
Izvestia sources attribute the situation to the increase of the Central Bank rate to 21%. People have started to deposit funds on short-term deposits, and banks will have to return them with interest already at the beginning of the next year, so the explanation of the situation by the lack of available funds for lending to large projects looks logical, one of them believes.
The old problem of IT-companies has become more acute - it is difficult for them to get loans, because there is practically nothing to pledge: banks do not want to consider intellectual property as such, says a top manager of one of the organizations. According to him, the financial situation of the IT-industry is somewhat simplified by profit tax benefits: now it is zero, from next year it will rise to 5% for such structures, but it used to be 20%, when a preferential tax regime was introduced for the IT-industry - this has greatly reduced the need for loans, says the interlocutor of "Izvestia".
- If earlier refusals were rather an exception, now it is becoming a systemic problem. Even major market players are faced with the fact that banks either refuse to finance or offer such high rates that the loan becomes uneconomical," Sergey Matusevich, director of web-technology development at Artezio (part of LANIT group), told Izvestia.
In his opinion, companies working on innovative projects with a long development cycle and unobvious payback periods are most at risk. This applies to startups in the field of artificial intelligence, companies developing complex technological solutions for industry, projects to create domestic analogs of foreign software. Banks are particularly wary of projects where the result depends heavily on the research component and requires significant investment in development, he points out.
The Ministry of Finance said that they have not received any appeals from IT companies on this issue.
- We provide companies with various support measures aimed at creating new IT products and import substitution. In 2024, the program of preferential lending is coming to an end, having shown high demand. All necessary funds have been allocated to companies in full. We managed to support more projects than originally planned," the ministry told Izvestia.
In 2025, the ministry plans to continue providing support measures for the industry, including grant co-financing, assistance to startups, and assistance to pilot implementations.
What risks do banks see in high-tech business?
Lending in general has slowed down due to high interest rates, as well as the need for banks to more prudently manage their shrinking capital and liquidity reserves, the Central Bank said in December. Corporate portfolio growth fell significantly to 0.8% after 2.3% in October. Monetary conditions in the Russian Federation have tightened more than the regulator expected, the Central Bank's press service said. This is due to the strengthening of regulation, which limits the issuance of loans to borrowers with a high debt load, as well as the deterioration of conditions on products for bank customers.
The Central Bank's policy forms prerequisites for reducing price growth and the return of inflation to the target of 4%, the regulator's press service specified. Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina noted "significant changes" in credit activity at a press conference in December after maintaining the key rate. According to her, the November data showed a "noticeable slowdown" in the growth rate of loan issuance.
Alexei Zabotkin, head of the Central Bank's monetary policy department, added that the regulator has been in close contact with businesses and banks over the past month and a half and has made sure that corporations have changed their plans to increase lending.
To say that the banking sector overnight refused to lend to IT-companies is incorrect - decisions are made on an individual basis for each borrower, explained the chairman of the board of directors of Finstar Bank Vladimir Kuznetsov. When deciding to grant a loan to a company, the bank analyzes its financial condition, taking into account various aspects of the potential borrower's activities. A high loan rate means that the bank associates certain risks with the borrower, and for different IT-companies this level can be radically different, he noted.
Among the problems of such companies related to lending is the almost complete absence of assets that can be considered as collateral, in the best case it is intellectual property or equipment, he confirmed.
Also, according to Vladimir Kuznetsov, among the risks that financiers see in the modern IT-industry are the quality of its products and the acute shortage of personnel: and these problems are often interrelated. It is no secret that within the framework of import substitution many IT products are developed very quickly, their quality and reliability have not yet been assessed by the market, so there is no guarantee that this or that development will pay off, he explained. This is largely due to the shortage of personnel: highly qualified specialists are bought up by the largest companies in the sector, while others have to hire less qualified personnel, which affects business efficiency, the expert says.
Sberbank continues to finance IT companies, with lending for import-substituting projects being one of the priorities, the financial organization said. The bank traditionally adheres to a balanced credit policy and carefully evaluates borrowers to maintain the high quality of the corporate loan portfolio, they emphasized.
"Izvestia sent inquiries to other major banks as well.
Since credit financing is not always available, organizations and their customers are left to develop and maintain IT infrastructure at their own expense, said Karen Kazarian, Director of the Internet Research Institute. Neither operators nor digital companies can do without expanding resources, building networks, data centers and the like - which means that their customers will eventually have to share some of these costs, the expert added.
- This, for example, means that online stores and marketplaces will have fewer discounts and promotions, the loading speed of favorite sites may slow down, and some services may even stop working. In general it is not excluded that prices for online goods and services sold online will rise. But in this way it will be possible to maintain the work and basic functionality of popular platforms," believes Karen Ghazaryan.
IT-companies in such conditions will have to strengthen financial discipline, increase the efficiency of employees, and abandon unprofitable projects, the payback period of which is indefinitely distant, the expert believes.
Deficit of credit financing may affect prices for buyers of e-commerce goods and services, agrees Konstantin Ankilov, General Director of TMT Consulting. In the current situation, developers and integrators may be forced to raise prices for customers, and those - for clients, he does not rule out. At the same time, IT-companies themselves will have to increase efficiency, get rid of some of the staff and projects that do not pay off in the foreseeable future, the expert believes.
- At the state level, it is necessary to expand programs of preferential lending for the IT sector, possibly with partial state subsidization of interest rates or provision of state guarantees on loans, - says Sergei Matusevich from Artezio.
At the level of the financial sector, it is important to develop new models for evaluating IT companies that take into account the specifics of the industry. A promising direction may be the development of venture financing and the creation of specialized funds with the participation of the state and private investors, he believes. IT companies themselves should work on diversification of funding sources, consider opportunities to attract investments through the issue of digital financial assets or participation in public-private partnership programs, the expert concluded.
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