Separate banks have increased the portfolios of consumers in the context of a common decline

The volume of portfolios of consumer loans of Russian banks decreases for four months in a row, the rate of fall is slowing down. At the same time, individual banks in February increased briefcases by billions of rubles. According to the market participants, there are two reasons for such local success: a mortgage that is restored against the background of an increase in the issuance of preferential loans, and the redistribution of borrowers within banking groups and the sector as a whole.

Against the backdrop of the continuing compression of the retail loan portfolio, individual banks have demonstrated stable growth indicators since the beginning of the year. According to Kommersant, based on published reporting for February 2025, in 11 credit organizations it exceeded 1 billion rubles.

Sberbank (50.6 billion rubles) demonstrated the greatest growth. But here it must be borne in mind that he is transferred by a portfolio of car loans of a subsidiary click Bank, which this year is planned to be attached to the maternal structure (see Kommersant on February 10), and his portfolio decreased by 46.1 billion rubles. Thus, as the natural increase in the retail portfolio of Sberbank was unknown.

Among the remaining banks, the most growth was shown by the VSP Bank (7.3 billion rubles), T-Bank (5.3 billion rubles), St. Petersburg Bank (3.7 billion rubles), Yandex-Bank (2.2 billion rubles) and Absolut-bank (2.2 billion rubles). The total increase in portfolios of the ten largest banks in this indicator, excluding Sberbank, amounted to 29.9 billion rubles.

Market participants confirm that the main driver of portfolio growth last month was mortgage lending. In particular, according to Frank RG, the leader in the growth rate of the issuance last month was mortgage lending (80%, up to 281.9 billion rubles). According to Andrei Afanasyev, the head of the consumer lending group of St. Petersburg Bank, the bank’s retail portfolio is growing due to mortgage loans. According to him, the main restraining factor for unstoped loans at present is regulatory restrictions, increased risk coefficients, rigid limits on macroprudentic limits and a high key rate. “The bank is actively developing the issuance of a mortgage, in most of the family mortgage, so the portfolio at the beginning of the year and showed the increase above the market, and credit cards and consumer loans occupy no more than 1% of our retail portfolio,” says Vitaly Kostyukevich, director of the Retail Bank retail products department.

The mortgage portfolio retains positive dynamics due to the preferential issuance of a family mortgage (see “Kommersant” of March 13), as well as due to limited pace of depreciation of loans, experts say. “With increased inflation, borrowers have less free funds that could be aimed at partial early repayment of loans,” said Yuri Belikov, managing director of the expert RA rating agency. In addition, according to him, in the context of reducing conditionally free funds, borrowers with several loans will first try to repay the most expensive of them ahead of schedule, and this is usually consumer.

Banks with the largest increase in the portfolio of the consumer codes were also included banks that are not specializing in a mortgage, such as Yandex-Bank or Auto Finance Bank and fast Bank, specializing in car loans. According to Yuri Belikov, here, in particular, the factor of some redistribution of customer bases may be significantly redistributed, which happens when individual players are overly twisted by nuts when considering applications. According to Konstantin Borodulin, managing director of the ratings of the financial institutions of the rating service, «  » better borrowers with low debt load and good credit history can count on the approval of a prosecution loan even in the current conditions. « 

Maxim Builov