February 22, 2019, 00:26 / Finance

Trust asks clients to repay debts early

He needs to return money to the Central Bank, and not earn profit Alexandra Astapenko Anna Tretyak Daria Borisyak

Trust has radically reduced the funds of individuals, says S&P analyst / Andrey Gordeev / Vedomosti

The "trust", to which banks rehabilitated by the Central Bank transfer bad and non-core assets, asks borrowers to repay loans ahead of schedule. An employee of the company that received such a request, and a person close to Trust, told Vedomosti about this. The bank also turns to borrowers who service debts and make repayments on time, says Vedomosti’s source. And the second explains: “Trust” needs to pay off the Central Bank, whose deposit funded the bank’s assets.

“Trust” is not aimed at developing cooperation with business or lending to it,” said Alexander Sokolov, chairman of the bank’s board (quoted by Interfax). According to him, all debts must either be collected if they are problematic, or refinanced if the borrower is in a difficult economic situation. In 2018, Trust stopped servicing individuals and sold retail loans for more than 25 billion rubles. This year the bank plans to reduce the portfolio of retail deposits from 7 billion to 1 billion rubles.

One of these clients who wants to refinance the Trust loan is Alexander Mamut’s Rambler Group. The group intends to refinance the debt from Sberbank, representatives of Rambler Group and the state bank said.

Since September 2014, Rambler was financed by FC Otkritie Bank , of which Mamut was a minority shareholder. But after the reorganization, FC Otkritie transferred non-core and problem assets to Trust for 438 billion rubles. Among them were loans to the Mamut group of companies. The amount was not disclosed; according to Sokolov, we are talking about a debt “worth billions of rubles.” Two months ago, the chairman of the board of FC Otkrytie, Mikhail Zadornov, told Vedomosti that the Mamut group was servicing the debt and did not allow any delays.

A Rambler representative said that the group services loans in full accordance with the terms of the agreements. The Trust representative did not answer the question whether the bank asks its borrowers to repay their debts early and whether Rambler services the debt. The task of Trust is to ensure the repayment of loans, he emphasized: “If another bank offers the client conditions that suit him and help him repay the loan, the company has the right to refinance.”

Banks extremely rarely ask borrowers to repay their loans ahead of schedule, says the head of the corporate unit of one of the large banks. Usually banks do this to reduce pressure on capital, but for Trust this is not relevant, it needs to deal with problem assets, notes leading methodologist at Expert RA Yuri Belikov.

Trust has radically reduced the funds of individuals, says S&P analyst Roman Rybalkin: in the fourth quarter of 2018 by 22 billion rubles. “The next step is to finally separate living and distressed assets. Probably, after the end of this process, “Trust” will surrender its banking license, which is quite expensive to hold, and will only engage in the collection or development of assets,” he concludes.