Half of the entrepreneurs who encountered blockages stopped their business. 8% switched to cash

52% of small and medium-sized enterprises that faced bank blockages were forced to completely stop operations, and the share of companies that switched to cash quadrupled in a year to 8%. Due to blockages, businesses incur losses that are almost impossible to compensate and lose confidence in the banking system.

Details. A study on blocking and their consequences commissioned by Promsvyazbank and Opora Rossii was conducted by the independent agency MAGRAM Market Research, RBC writes about the results .

• The survey was conducted in April 2019, it was completed by the owners and top managers of 2,300 small and medium-sized companies from 23 regions.
• Of these, 20% experienced account blocking in 2018.
• For 43% of them there were serious consequences. In 2017, the share of those who were seriously affected by blocking was 28%.

Causes. For several years, entrepreneurs have been complaining about unreasonable blocking by banks - for example, they talked about this at the end of 2018 at a BellClub meeting with Elvira Nabiullina. After that, the head of the Central Bank said that the rules for blocking and compiling blacklists of companies that are sent to banks will be relaxed. MAGRAM Market Research found that:

• slightly more than half (51%) of blocking in 2018 was due to the fault of the entrepreneurs themselves: 35% did not pay taxes on time, 10% violated the rules for submitting declarations, another 6% made other internal errors;
• in 16% of cases, blocking occurred due to errors of regulatory authorities, in 14% - banks blocked funds without explaining the reasons, in 10% - on suspicion of money laundering on the basis of the anti-money laundering law;
• there is no data on the number of entrepreneurs who faced blocking and mass refusals from banks last year. In 2017, Delovaya Rossiya estimated them at about 700,000.

Consequences. Entrepreneurs are losing confidence in the banking system and are switching to cash payments. Medium and large businesses are beginning to actively use alternative clearing systems, told Alexander Lyuboserdov, partner of the Professional Legal Center, RBC. The share of companies that switched to cash increased four times over the year, to 8%.

• There are almost no chances to challenge the blocking. The law does not provide for liability for banks for illegal blocking, so it is almost impossible to recover compensation for losses, says Trendlaw lawyer Vladimir Yefremov.
• If a business fails to pass the rehabilitation procedure launched by the Central Bank, it is doomed. The regulator told the publication that more than 11.5 thousand people have been rehabilitated. In favor of business, 37% of decisions were made, and in 63% of cases banks won, Rosfinmonitoring said.
• Withdrawing money from a bank that has blocked your transactions is very expensive. For such cases, banks set protective tariffs - an average of 10-20% of the transfer amount.

What's next? The Central Bank agrees that banks often abuse their powers, and is going to update the list of dubious transactions soon. In addition, the Central Bank claims that it has changed the approach to compiling black lists (on their basis, all banks can refuse to serve businesses in general). Now the regulator informs banks only about high-risk clients - the number of persons falling into the list of bank refuseniks has “significantly” decreased. But no one discloses the statistics either on blocking or on refuseniks. Another initiative: the Ministry of Finance, on behalf of the President, prepared a bill that would limit the blocking of funds without good reason.