In the January-April period, the rate of Russians who applied for micro loans to cover their existing debts through consumer loans, credit cards or the same micro loans was 5.8 percent. In the same periods of 2022 and 2021, the figures were higher – 7.7% and 10.8%, respectively. This is stated in a study on the Moneyman alternative lending service received by the editors of socialbites.ca.
“After the shock in the economy in 2022, citizens continue to calculate their probabilities more reasonably in general when applying for borrowed funds, trying to buy them strictly according to their needs, not by a margin,” said Andrey Greznev, Marketing Director of Moneyman. .
He noted that this year’s decline in the share of borrowers who want to pay off their debts with micro-credits is on the backdrop of the recovery in loan volumes, which fell in 2022. According to the National Bureau of Credit Histories (NBKI), in the first four months of 2023 their volume reached 1.22 trillion rubles. This is less than the same period of 2021 (1.37 trillion rubles), but significantly higher than in January-April 2022 (0.77 trillion rubles).
According to Greznev, the supply of microcredit also fell this year – microfinance institutions (MFIs) began to carefully control borrowers against the backdrop of the tightening requirements of the Central Bank. From January 1, 2023, the regulatory body introduced macroprudential limits for MFIs, i.e. quantitative restrictions on lending. For MFIs, the share of loans with a PTI above 80% (when loan repayment takes 80% of revenue) in total disbursements (for consumer loans and line-of-line loans) should not exceed 35% for each loan type.
The study analyzed more than 300,000 loans granted across Russia.