2023-04-24 19:23:05
Banks will be able to jointly decide on granting restructuring to a debtor who has loans from several financial institutions at once. This follows from the new standards published by the Central Bank. Such an initiative will allow lenders to better understand their client’s situation and develop a solution that meets the interests of all parties. However, the current wording needs to be improved, including the definition of the “hard situation” of the borrower.
The Bank of Russia proposed an interaction mechanism to solve the problem of debtors who find themselves in a “difficult life situation.” This applies to borrowers who have loans from different banks. “Lenders either do not know regarding each other, or do not fully trust each other and cannot agree on a temporary joint reduction in payments so that the borrower can service both loans,” the Central Bank notes. And if one of the banks collects the debt through the court, then this can lead to the fact that “the borrower loses housing and becomes bankrupt,” the regulator points out.
The application of the standard will allow solving this problem on terms acceptable to all parties, according to the Central Bank. Thus, all obligations of the borrower to specific creditors are preserved, the rights of claim under the loan agreement remain with the bank that originally issued the product, no additional invoices are expected. In addition, the borrower will have the right to accept or not accept the proposed terms of the restructuring. However, the new standard does not apply to microloans.
From the report of the Bank of Russia for 2022, it follows that from March to December, banks provided restructuring for almost 1 million consumer loans in the amount of 455 billion rubles. At the same time, the main part fell on the bank’s own restructuring programs.
“The conflict of delay very often consists in the fact that the borrower disappears, does not get in touch with the lender, does not explain what is happening, does not show signs of good faith behavior. Very often this happens because the borrower, having reduced resources, first of all repays collateral obligations, ”says Evgenia Lazareva, head of the ONF project“ For the Rights of Borrowers ”. Therefore, with all the completeness of information regarding existing obligations, it will be easier to develop a mechanism for uniform repayment in the interests of all creditors, and the borrowers themselves, she is sure.
A number of banks already use similar techniques. Denis Kuznetsov, director of the Retail Collection and Settlement Division at Sberbank, believes that the proposed complex settlement “helps to comfortably return to the payment schedule for loans issued by various banks and avoid accumulating debts.” At the same time, the bank implements such transactions with partners, in particular with Rosbank. As Evgeny Senkovsky, director of the department for dealing with overdue debts of Rosbank, points out, “there are no disputes regarding interaction – the rules of work are known, restructuring programs for many banks are in the public domain.” However, according to him, so far there are few clients who have taken advantage of the complex settlement program and “we should not expect significant growth.”
However, in its current form, the regulator’s initiative requires significant improvements, according to experts and market participants.
“Insurmountable barriers to the implementation of the idea may be the unwillingness of market participants to give up the benefits of judicial recovery for the sake of settlement at the pre-trial stage and the difference in the types of restructuring, including the readiness of a number of creditors to write off,” Elman Mehdiyev, chairman of the board of SRO Mir, lists.
Now, in such a situation, market participants usually refuse borrowers, as they are not sure that competitors will act in their interests, Evgeny Novikov, head of the financial settlement department at VTB, agrees. In addition, the document retains a rather vague definition of “difficult life situation”, which is the basis for revising the terms of the loan agreement, said Dmitry Yanin, chairman of the board of the International Confederation of Consumer Societies. “The procedure for choosing an operator for complex debt settlement is not quite clear. The existence of a procedure for agreeing an operator by all creditors is indicated, but the procedure itself is not regulated, ”says Yury Belikov, Managing Director for Validation at Expert RA.
The Bank of Russia did not respond to Kommersant’s request.
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