To lend strictly: banks urged not to issue loans to bankrupt customers for 10 years
Financial organizations are asking to tighten the terms of lending to bankrupts, forbidding them for not five, but ten years to apply for loans upon completion of the procedure. This is stated in a letter from the Association of Russian Banks to the State Duma (Izvestia has it). The ARB explained: recently, cases have become more frequent when debtors apply for loans, initially not intending to repay them under the guise of insolvency. However, the proposed strictures run counter to the government's policy of simplifying the bankruptcy procedure. This is an important social tool: it helps people who find themselves in a difficult situation to start their financial history from scratch. How to strengthen control in this area without harming bona fide citizens, and what benefits banks will receive from stricter rules — in the Izvestia article.
Consequences of bankruptcy for individuals
Control over fictitious bankruptcy should be tightened, and the period after which insolvent debtors can take out a new loan should be doubled to ten years instead of five. This is stated in a letter from the Association of Russian Banks to the chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin.
In addition, the Association proposes not to release bankrupt citizens who do not work and do not try to improve their financial situation, as well as those who have assumed obviously unaffordable credit obligations. The ARB also asks not to automatically write off debts to customers who do not give objective reasons for losing money — it is better to send these cases for additional review to financial institutions. An exception may be, for example, theft of funds by fraudsters or car theft.
In addition, in its letter, the banking association proposes to monitor financial transactions and the situation of not only the debtor filing for bankruptcy, but also his spouse. Izvestia sent requests to the State Duma, the Ministry of Energy and the Bank of Russia on whether to strengthen control over bankrupts. The Ministry of Energy said that when the ARB proposals are received, they will be comprehensively considered.
The institution of bankruptcy is a way for Russians to free themselves from debt for those who find themselves in a difficult financial situation. There are two mechanisms in Russia: extrajudicial and judicial. The first scheme is free and runs through the MFC. Since November 2023, people with debts from 25 thousand to 1 million rubles (before that it was from 50 thousand to 500 thousand rubles), as well as pensioners and recipients of social benefits have been allowed to use this mechanism. The second allows citizens to declare themselves insolvent through the court if they have a debt of more than 500 thousand rubles. This procedure is paid for. Citizens can resort to bankruptcy once every five years.
Bankruptcy Fraudsters
At the same time, the ARB letter says that unscrupulous persons regularly appear in the field of bankruptcy: lawyers who promise to write off debts without legal principles, citizens who want to cancel debts without parting with their property — an apartment, a car... For example, a person takes a large sum for the only housing that the court has the right to reserve for him, and then declares himself insolvent and is not going to give the funds to the bank, while they cannot take the apartment away from him. However, it is very difficult to prove that a person did not initially plan to pay off debts.
And now, for fictitious bankruptcy, if it caused major damage to the bank — from 2.25 million rubles, criminal liability is provided with penalties ranging from a fine of at least 100 thousand rubles to imprisonment for up to six years. But such cases, as practice shows, rarely reach court.
—At the same time, ARB receives signals from banks about a multiple increase in the number of cases of unfair bankruptcy," Larisa Mityashova, head of the legal department of the Association of Russian Banks, told Izvestia.
An unscrupulous debtor, as a rule, has money to live on and pay for bankruptcy proceedings.: this indicates that the person is hiding real sources of income, which he does not report to the courts, she said.
In the DOM bank.The Russian Federation supported the initiative: the number of attempts to pull off insolvency frauds is increasing, Kirill Malinovsky, director of customer service and recovery at the credit institution, agreed. Such people are actively assisted by pseudo-legal companies that help the debtor initiate bankruptcy proceedings.
The illegal practice of false bankruptcy threatens not only damage to individual banks, but also disrupts the balance of interests between creditors and citizens. This creates risks for the entire banking system, Kirill Malinovsky agreed. If loans are forgiven to all those who do not want to pay their debts, then financial institutions simply will not be able to pay off their depositors.
Pros and cons of the procedure
However, so far the volume of write-offs for bankruptcies is extremely small against the background of the entire Russian financial system. The authorities disclose the total amount only through an out-of-court procedure: for the entire time of its operation, people have been forgiven debts of 7 billion rubles, follows from the data of Fedresurs. For comparison, the total loan portfolio of citizens is several times larger — about 37 trillion rubles. That is, there is no threat to financial stability yet.
OTP Bank also told Izvestia that it was too early to talk about the difficulties associated with fictitious bankrupts.
Declaring a borrower insolvent is the most negative scenario for the bank, said Andrei Barkhota, PhD in Economics. By proposing to ban former bankrupts from applying for loans for 10 years, lenders are trying to minimize their own risks. However, they have other tools to insure themselves — for example, to create reserves for possible losses on such loans. Probably, market players want to save on these reserves. However, in the context of record profits in the banking sector, it is inappropriate to save on reserves.
At the same time, the measures proposed in the ARB may also affect bona fide borrowers who find themselves in a difficult situation. The initiative also contradicts the line of the state, which in recent years has only simplified the bankruptcy procedure, since it is an important social tool. The most recent amendments to the federal law "On Bankruptcy" were adopted in November 2024, when the procedure was simplified for those who have their only home on a mortgage. Prior to that, even those who have regular income in the form of payments from the state, such as pensioners and recipients of child benefits, were allowed to go into out—of-court bankruptcy.
"We must not forget that the procedure is aimed at helping those who cannot repay financial obligations on their own," the National Association of Professional Collection Agencies noted.
They stressed that the 10 years proposed by the ARB is a significant period. During this period, a person may experience too many changes, you can not deprive him of banking products for such a long period. The initiative may have too painful an impact on people who at some point actually found themselves unable to repay loans. That is why its adoption should be treated with restraint, so as not to "strangle" an important social mechanism that has not yet had time to properly launch.
As measures to combat unfair lending, banks are already using legal mechanisms (granting loans secured or guaranteed) and economic instruments (forming reserves for problem loans with their issuance at increased rates), said Dmitry Zikratsky, director of the legal department of the crypto broker Cifra Markets.
Much more important, according to Kirill Malinovsky from DOM Bank.In the Russian Federation, strengthen control measures over companies that actively offer citizens an easy and quick bankruptcy procedure and guaranteed cancellation of all debts.
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