Banks doubled costs to fight debtors

Over the past six months, banks' expenses on legal proceedings with clients have almost doubled. Bankers are prevented from resolving disputes out of court by the insolvency of debtors and the inability to write off bad debts without court. As a result, the volume of claims from large banks to Moscow courts already exceeds 30 billion rubles.

Legal costs of Russian banks at the beginning of last year amounted to 39.1 billion rubles; in the second quarter of 2008 they increased by only 1.2 billion rubles, and in the third and fourth quarters they amounted to 67.0 billion rubles. and 71.4 billion rubles. respectively. For the calculations, data from quarterly profit and loss reports of 855 Russian banks published on the Bank of Russia website were used.

VTB 24 incurred the most legal expenses in the fourth quarter of last year: RUB 7.6 million. This amount is related to proceedings regarding loans to individuals (VTB 24’s share in the retail lending market is 8.7%, the second largest after Sberbank). Trust Bank spent 5.9 million rubles on legal costs in the last three months of 2008, and 19.8 million rubles in the third quarter. The Trust did not comment on these figures. According to experts, for the most part they are related to the long-standing case of collecting about 2.5 billion rubles from the bank. in favor of Rosneft (see Kommersant, March 6). The top five in terms of legal costs also included Zapsibkombank (RUB 3.7 million), Sberbank (RUB 3.5 million) and Avangard Bank (RUB 3.4 million).

In the expense section of the bank's profit and loss statement, in the article "Legal and arbitration costs" all bank expenses attributable to the legal process are taken into account. These are primarily state fees when filing a claim, as well as travel expenses and attorney fees. The amount of the state duty when filing a claim subject to property valuation depends on the required amount, but does not exceed 100 thousand rubles. when applying to an arbitration court and 20 thousand rubles - to a court of general jurisdiction.

Banks' legal expenses for the first three months of this year have not yet been consolidated. But the number of claims is growing at such a pace that, according to one of the lawyers of a large Russian bank, with the funds that the bank is now paying as state fees, it could support the court of an entire city. According to the Moscow Arbitration Court, in the first half of 2008, banks were four times less likely to sue corporate borrowers than at the end of the year (see table). Thus, Alfa Bank requires additional collateral and otherwise plans to return through the court $1 billion of debt from the structures of Basel - En+ (see Kommersant of March 13) and has secured the arrest of the accounts of Glavmosstroy (see Kommersant from February 9).

However, the number of legal proceedings between banks and individuals will grow at a faster pace, says Alexey Kuranov, head of the credit monitoring department at Bank Vozrozhdenie. Sberbank notes that most of the legal expenses in the fourth quarter of 2008 came from claims by individuals.

The increase in litigation against defaulters is directly proportional to the increase in overdue debt. Its total volume as of February 1, according to the Central Bank, amounted to 494.4 billion rubles. (2.3% of the total loan portfolio of the banking system). However, according to Ekaterina Trofimova, deputy head of the Paris office of Standard & Poor's, the level of real problem debt in the banks' loan portfolio is currently already 10%, and by the end of the year it could rise to 15%.

Bankers say they are less interested in prosecuting debtors or collecting collateral than in settling disputes out of court. “Before filing a lawsuit, we are trying as much as possible to resolve the problem out of court,” VTB’s press service said yesterday, “and we continue negotiations, even by filing a lawsuit.” But, according to the deputy head of the legal department of Absolut Bank, Ekaterina Lyubicheva, during the crisis, situations have become more frequent when insolvent borrowers are not ready for pre-trial settlement and evade these procedures.

The number of bank claims against borrowers will also increase because banks need to reduce reserves created for possible loan losses. To write off a bad debt, it is necessary to go to court, explains Alexey Bykov, advisor to the board of directors of the Russian Development Bank. The fact is that the bank has the right to write off a bad debt and restore reserves only after receiving a certificate of impossibility of judicial collection. Until then, the amount of reserves eats up part of bank profits. Sberbank, which spent 3.5 million rubles in the fourth quarter. for the courts, the volume of reserves for possible losses on loans to individuals and legal entities as of January 1, according to the turnover sheet (form 101) amounted to 172.8 billion rubles.

Yulia Kommersant-Chaikina, Anna Kommersant-Zanina

Costs of legal proceedings