Banks don't want to collect credit card debts

The share of card loans in work with collectors for the first time exceeded other types of retail lending. Since the beginning of the year, banks have transferred about 20 billion rubles to them. debt on credit cards, which became practically the only driver for the increase in the portfolio of bank debts in the work of collectors. The reasons for such rapid growth are the rapid development of card lending and the reluctance of bankers to spend their own efforts on repaying small loans.

According to a study by the Sequoia Credit Consolidation agency, in the first half of the year, the volume of loans to individuals processed by collectors under an agency scheme (the debt remains on the bank’s balance sheet) amounted to 152.2 billion rubles, having increased by 6.7% since the beginning of the year. The largest share in it was occupied by credit card debts - 38% (RUB 57.83 billion). Second place went to loans for the purchase of goods in retail chains (POS loans) - 27% (41 billion rubles), third - cash loans - 23% (35 billion rubles). The share of car loans accounts for only 6% (9.1 billion rubles), mortgages - 3% (4.6 billion rubles).

At the beginning of the year, the distribution of the shares of retail loans handled by collection agencies looked different. The first place was occupied by POS loans (30%), followed by credit cards (26%), cash loans (25%), car loans (9%), and mortgages (2%). The increase in the volume of debts in the work of collectors since the beginning of this year was mainly ensured by the transfer by banks of debt on credit cards (an increase of 20 billion rubles) and mortgages (+1.7 billion rubles), while the volume of all other types of retail debts , transferred by banks to collectors, on the contrary, decreased, it follows from the research materials.

Market participants are reluctant to disclose their own data, pointing out that the share of gambling debts given in the study looks realistic. “We also note an increase in the share of credit card debt in our portfolio, although for us it is small in itself, since we concentrate on secured loans,” says Alexander Fedorov, general director of the YSB Center agency. According to Ilya Fomin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of BKB Russkollektor, since the beginning of the year, banks have actually been more active in transferring card debts. “This is not even due to the fact that the quality of card debts is worse than other unsecured loans,” he says. “It’s just that banks are very actively growing this particular segment of their business.” On average, card debts are transferred to collectors when they are overdue from one to six months, he adds.

The expert’s opinion is confirmed by statistics. According to Frank Research Group, in January-June 2012, among unsecured loans, the volume of credit card debt grew the fastest, increasing by 40%, to RUB 570.9 billion. Over the same period, cash loans increased by 23%, to RUB 3.3 trillion, and debt on POS loans decreased by 8.8%, to RUB 176 billion. In total, according to the Central Bank, in the first half of the year the total portfolio of loans to individuals grew by 18.4%, to 6.6 trillion rubles, and the share of overdue loans in it decreased from 5.2% to 4.62% (304.3 billion rubles ).

However, the reason for the increase in the share of card debts in the work of collectors lies not only in the rapid growth of this business segment, but also in the disinterest of bankers in working with these debts on their own. “First of all, banks are interested in independently collecting large debts secured by collateral, since the probability of their return is higher,” says Vladislav Kotelnikov, head of the department for the collection of overdue debts of Raiffeisenbank. “For a product such as credit cards, banks set a higher interest margin, which allows us to engage collectors who work quite effectively with small debts.” The average amount of card debt in work with collectors, according to the study, is 47.5 thousand rubles, while for cash loans it is already 108.7 thousand rubles, and 800 thousand rubles. on a mortgage.

Olga Shestopal

Cards were handed to collectors