Banks will reduce reserves when financing leasing companies
The Bank of Russia can improve the terms of lending by banks of leasing companies (LC). Now for such loans, banks have to reserve up to 50% of the loan amount. At the same time, bank loans today account for two -thirds of the LC funding. According to the market participants, the mitigation of the terms of reservation on loans will revive the situation in the leasing market.
At the 14th Congress of the Leasing industry of Russia, the head of the Association of Banks of Russia (Abr) Anatoly Kozlachkov said that Abr has achieved a revision of the norm according to which lending to leasing companies belonged to the third category of quality (dubious loans). On such loans, banks should create reserves up to 50% of the loan amount, which inhibits the development of LC lending. In what category after the cancellation of the norm such loans should be attributed to ABR “Kommersant” was not reported. The Bank of Russia did not answer the request of Kommersant.
Meanwhile, earlier, responding to the request of the United Leasing Association (OLA), the Bank of Russia said that the issue of amendments to the appropriate position of the Central Bank is being considered. According to this document, it is planned to supplement the list of exceptions to which the requirements for the formation of an increased reserve size, leasing companies are not applied. It also notes that the bank has the right to decide on the classification of the loan into a higher one than the third category of quality, “subject to the presence of sufficient justification and with the stable financial situation of the borrower – the leasing company”. As such conditions, the Central Bank considers the financial situation of the borrower, which is estimated no worse than the average during the last completed and current year.
Leasing companies note that bank loans today account for 60–70% of their total funding. According to Nikolai Alekseev, the director of the Interlizing Investors, the share is tended to reduce against the background of the growth of bond funding and reinvestment of own capital of leasing companies. “At the same time, banks still remain system-forming players in the borrowed capital of the leasing industry,” he says. According to him, the practice of the work of banks suggests that leasing companies loans belong to the first quality category. “We believe that the requirement to classify the third category of quality can be attributed to the incorrect interpretation of the methodology and, of course, even in the conditions of the economic crisis, the quality and the provision of loans issued to leasing companies remains at a very high level,” says Nikolai Alekseev. In his opinion, a decrease in the value of funding to a level of 16-18% will lead to a market revival. In turn, the general director of the Insight Lising group Mikhail Gonopolsky notes that banks are now tightening approaches to lending to leasing companies due to the difficult situation in the auto -vital market (see Kommersant on May 19). “Accordingly, while the situation in the leasing industry will not change for the better, it can be expected that credit lines at adequate market rates will be available mainly to large leasing groups,” he says. The general director of “Region Leasing” Rustem Mukhamedov supports the idea of canceling the requirements to attribute LC loans to the third category. “This will ensure more favorable conditions for attracting funding by participants in the leasing market,” he said. In his opinion, financially stable leasing companies correspond to the second category of quality, and some large players can even claim the first.
Experts believe that it will be difficult to get into the first category with zero reserves of leasing companies, but they may well count on the second category with reserves of no more than 20%. Thus, the managing director of the NKR rating agency Stanislav Volkov notes that at the beginning of 2025, leasing companies attracted more than 10 trillion rubles in banks, which is more than 11% of the balance of legal entities to banks (about 87 trillion rubles on January 1, 2025). “When making a decision on the structure of the financing transaction, banking groups also take into account the required level of reservation, therefore, mitigating approaches to assessing risks on loans to leasing companies will lead to more corporate financing transactions through leasing companies that are included in the perimeter of banking groups,” he said. According to him, for leasing companies that are not included in banking groups, this will improve diversification of the funding structure, expanding the number of partner banks.
