The authorities decided to bring order to the microloan market. Now the contract will have to indicate the effective interest rate and loans worth tens of thousands per annum will be received by citizens armed with new knowledge. However, it is possible that there will be fewer applicants.

EVGENY SIGAL

Large framed

Denga's calls for microfinance organizations to mandatory indicate the effective interest rate have been heard. The corresponding bill was published on the website of the Ministry of Finance. The document, however, talks about the “full cost of the microloan,” but Deputy Head of the Federal Service for Financial Markets (FSFM) Yulia Bondareva clarified that we are talking specifically about disclosing the effective interest rate - in her words, “a task of paramount importance.” Moreover, judging by the text of the draft, it will not be small print, but a specially highlighted fragment of the contract - large, in a separate frame.

The appearance of the bill was preceded by a long-term series of complaints from victims of the actions of modern moneylenders, scandals in the media and the blogosphere, and even a rally near the office of Russian Post - it provided its network to the company Mini-Loan Express, whose loan rates reach an astronomical 473 billion percent per annum.

In fact, even in the law on microfinance activities and microfinance organizations (MFOs), adopted a year and a half ago, they were obliged to “provide the person who applied for a microloan with complete and reliable information about the procedure and conditions for providing microloans.” But in practice, the effective interest rate was not disclosed, and moneylenders even tried to argue that it should be calculated as a compound interest.

Evgeny Bernshtam, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Adela Financial Retail Group, one of the main players in the microfinance market, positively assessed the initiative of the Federal Financial Markets Service. According to him, in the companies “Finotdel” and “House Money” (part of the Adela group), “the effective rate is already described and calculated.” However, Denga was unable to find it explicitly on the websites of these companies.

“According to the current law, information about the terms of a loan must be disclosed to the client, but it does not indicate in what form. And the form of submission matters: most clients will not read what is written somewhere in small print,” explained Andrei Reznichenko from law firm “Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev and Partners.” “Thus, formally the law is implemented, but in reality the terms of the loan are not clearly communicated to the person.”

Last mile

In 2007, banks were required to disclose the effective rate. As a result, consumer lending rates decreased by two to three times. And the order of the Central Bank was enough for this. “Regulatory acts of the Bank of Russia for credit institutions are no less important than the norm of the law, and violation is fraught with revocation of the license,” reminds Reznichenko. “There is no such supervision over the microfinance sector by the Federal Financial Markets Service, therefore it is better to disclose the effective interest rate not through an order, but in the form of law."

By the way, some experts believe that it was the banks that lobbied for the requirement to disclose the full cost of the microloan. However, the banking community rejects such ideas. “MFOs do not constitute any competition for banks,” says Ravil Nigmatov, deputy director of the strategic and organizational department of Absolut Bank. “The total debt to MFOs is less than 40 billion rubles, and the volume of lending to individuals in the Russian banking system is about 4 trillion rubles. This simply incomparable market volumes.”

In addition, people who have been refused by banks often go to moneylenders. Representatives of microfinance organizations see the situation in their own way. “We occupy the niche of the last mile, that is, to whom banks cannot reach,” says Evgeny Bernshtam. The average client's debt to microfinance organizations at the end of 2011 was 23.6 thousand rubles.

“When they need money for one or two weeks to reach their salary, people go to pawnshops. In this sense, MFOs are a substitute for classic pawnshops,” says Nigmatov. With the difference that in a pawnshop the collateral is a grandmother’s ring, and in an MFO it is the borrower’s good faith, as well as the norms of the Civil Code and the prospect of litigation.

Running through the courts to collect debts from hiding citizen-borrowers is a task that is often beyond the capabilities of large banks. MFOs solve the problem using the method of joint and several liability: honest borrowers pay for someone else’s non-payment. So it’s not just greed that explains the current prohibitively high level of rates on the microloan market. Well, incidents happen in the courts.

For example, in the Ulyanovsk region, one claim of an MFO against a borrower was left unsatisfied, and another was only partially satisfied: the borrower paid off the principal amount of the loan, but was exempt from paying interest. The reason is probably a peculiar interpretation of social justice based on Article 179 of the Civil Code, which invalidates transactions with enslaving conditions.

“The main users of microloans are citizens, so disputes between microfinance organizations and borrowers are mostly considered by courts of general jurisdiction, which tend to interpret legal norms focused on other situations in favor of the consumer,” explains Andrey Reznichenko.

However, lawyers are confident that this practice will not become widespread. “The microfinance organization issues loans on pre-announced conditions to any person who applies to it, so it cannot be said that the organization individually took advantage of the difficult financial situation of the borrower by issuing him a loan on extremely unfavorable conditions, which is necessary for the application of Article 179 of the Civil Code,”— says Reznichenko.

Ersatz Bank

In 2010, the portfolio of Russian microfinance organizations grew by 15%, in 2011 - by 34%. “The market will continue to grow, so it is necessary to take regulatory measures aimed at protecting consumer rights,” notes Oleg Kazakovtsev, a member of the Committee on Budget and Financial Markets of the Federation Council. Moreover, we are talking not only about the obligation to disclose the effective rate, but also about administrative regulation of the industry.

“If the law on MFOs was aimed at legalization, now it is necessary to limit usury. Insane rates of 2-3% per day require government intervention,” says Kazakovtsev. “My proposal: limit the marginal rate at a compromise level, conditionally 1% per day ".

Market participants react painfully to such initiatives. “I stand for economic regulation of the industry, and not for administrative strengthening. We do not support methods of pressure,” argues Evgeny Bernshtam.

Other possible regulatory measures include increasing the minimum authorized capital of MFOs and introducing mandatory audits. “You are carried away by microscopic details, but it’s not just about the rates. The problem is in the Civil Code, the section on loans and borrowings is not written there very well,” says former financial ombudsman (arbiter for out-of-court resolution of disputes. - “Money” ) Pavel Medvedev. As a result, loans turn out to be only banking history, and loans can be given by anyone to anyone.”

And the law on microfinance organizations itself has enough loopholes that allow microfinancers to go beyond the scope of activities defined by law. “Restrictions were set, and then carefully removed in the ninth article, which allows, along with microfinance activities, to carry out other activities, including issuing other loans and providing other services,” Medvedev points out. MFOs often take advantage of this opportunity to attract deposits and make instant payments. The result is actually a full-fledged bank - loans, deposits, payments - only uncontrolled.

However, in order to overcome the carelessness of borrowers, it may be enough to indicate how many thousands or millions of interest per annum this or that loan costs. And most of the problems associated with MFOs will disappear by themselves.

How low rates turn into astronomical ones

Bid
(% V
day)Rate
(% V
week)Rate
(% V
month)Effective
bid (%
year.)

0.1	0.7	3.0	44
0.2	1.4	6.2	107
0.5	3.6	16.1	517
1	7.2	34.8	3.7 thousand
2	14.9	81.1	137.6 thousand
3	23.0	142.7	4.8 million
5	40.7	332.2	5.4 billion

Microloans under a microscope