In February 2023, consumer lending activity showed a notable shift. The total volume of loans extended by banks declined by 12.3 percent from a year earlier, signaling tighter credit conditions even as competition among lenders persisted. This drop occurred alongside a shrinking average loan size and a rise in defaults, painting a clearer picture of a consumer finance landscape cooling after a period of expansion. The observations come from the Scoring Bureau and were reported by Kommersant, which tracks how lending behavior evolves when risk assessment tightens and demand changes in response to macroeconomic signals.
For February, the Scoring Bureau reported that banks issued 2.35 million loan agreements totaling 431.8 billion rubles. In terms of the number of approvals, activity remained below the typically weak January baseline, underscoring a cautious stance among lenders. The average loan value also shifted markedly, moving from 183 thousand rubles a year earlier to around 240 thousand rubles, indicating some segments of borrowers continued to access larger facilities even as overall volumes cooled. These figures suggest a nuanced picture: while the number of loans granted was down, some customers still secured higher-value credit lines, potentially reflecting a mix of installment loans, personal loans, and credit lines that remained attractive to a subset of borrowers despite tighter conditions.
Delinquency dynamics intensified as well. The amount of debt overdue by 90 days or more rose to 712 billion rubles, marking a 6.6 percent increase since the start of the year and bringing the total overdue stock to a portfolio near 7.94 trillion rubles. The typical overdue amount grew by about 10 percent, reaching 145.6 thousand rubles on average, a level not seen since 2021 (when February’s figure stood at 132.5 thousand rubles). This trend signals growing stress among borrowers who are navigating higher costs and slower income growth, which in turn places financial strain on lenders that rely on ongoing repayment streams to maintain profitability and liquidity.
The article notes that banks are pulling back on lending growth due to concerns about returns on larger loans, a pattern consistent with risk-aware policy among lenders. Natalia Bogomolova, a bank ratings analyst with NRA, highlighted that this tendency aligns with a traditional banking approach: in crisis scenarios, institutions tend to tighten risk controls and prioritize protecting the loan portfolio by focusing on customer counts and access rather than expanding the size of individual loans. This nuanced move—restricting loan size while maintaining or increasing customer reach—reflects a strategy aimed at preserving credit quality in the face of uncertain macroeconomic conditions, even if that comes at the cost of shorter-term volume growth.