Credit organizations have limited their ability to go negative
The pandemic took everyone by surprise: businessmen and simple hard workers, officials and bankers. If there are those who come out of the coronacrisis on horseback and in the black, then they are clearly a minority. In the face of a new economic disaster, everyone is equal, but someone is more equal. While the Russians make ends meet, the banks decided to dig a bigger hole between these ends. Financial institutions have limited customers the ability to go negative if they run out of money on a debit card. This service is called overdraft. This is something like a “promised payment” for mobile operators, when, after the money has expired, the client’s balance is not disconnected from the connection, but a minus appears on the account, which must then be covered. So, against the backdrop of a pandemic, banks more than halved overdraft limits. According to the results of May, it was possible to get a minus on a debit card by an average of 20.4 thousand rubles, Equifax credit bureau found out. Back in March, the average limits were 60% higher, and in November last year even reached 60 thousand rubles. In addition, credit institutions reduced the issuance of cards with an overdraft option by 8 times compared with March, when the coronacrisis was just beginning. Now everything is different. For three months, the population and business went bankrupt, incomes fell, and therefore banks no longer believe in the solvency of customers. In the language of bankers, this is called “rising credit risk.” In fact, overdraft for card users was a profitable loan, as a rule, interest-free for a period specified by the bank – 60 or 100 days. However, now this shop has been covered up: it is worthless for impoverished Russians to spend money on completely impoverished banks, and even not to pay a bribe!
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According to statistics, as of June 1, 903 thousand cards with an overdraft option are in circulation. The total limit on them amounted to 13.2 billion rubles. That is, almost a million people could not be afraid to be dishonored at the cash desk of the store, if “there is not enough money on your card.” For some, the opportunity to go into the red was the only way to reach the salary. From this, the bank received customer loyalty and interest, if suddenly the cardholder greatly delayed repayment of the debt. During the crisis, such grateful customers suddenly became the most undesirable: why lend without interest if these 13 billion rubles can be scrolled at a rate of 10% per annum?
However, banks are also not the most successful period. Their main source of income – loans – is sagging. The pandemic forced people to repay their debts and cooled consumer fervor for new ones. There are more of those who have not mastered loan repayment: the volume of “bad” debts has increased. Unlucky for banks and with additional sources of income. In the name of anti-crisis support for business, the authorities limited acquiring fees (what the company pays for banks for each non-cash purchase), canceled “bank roaming”, made transfers in the Quick Payment System temporarily free. The threat of cancellation of commissions when paying for housing and communal services also hangs over financial organizations. And it’s also an annoying obligation to grant credit deferrals to companies and individuals who lost their income!
Bankers have already been so driven that they threatened to pay card service and even calls to call centers in return. This proposal was made by the Association of Banks of Russia. By the way, the threat is very real. Now the Central Bank does not have the authority to “beat the banks”, if they decide to cash in on the issue of cards and additional services. True, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, promised to request such powers in the State Duma, but this is clearly not a quick process.
But is it really hard for a bank to live? Just the other day, the Prime Minister signed a decree on subsidies to banks in the amount of 22.5 billion rubles for preferential car loans. And this is just one of the multibillion-dollar subsidies that banks will receive from the state to recover lost income from credit deferrals, zero wage loans and other banking support measures. Meanwhile, vaunted soft loans and deferrals are not so easy to get. As shown by “test purchases” from the Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov and business ombudsman Boris Titov, banks approve a third of applications at best, and most of them are simply ignored. Unpleasant statistics are also confirmed by the real stories of businessmen who were counting on the promised help, but who received refusals or unsubscribes from banks in response to their application.
In any case, someone who, and banks shall not remain aground. In recent years, the state has systematically raked large banks for itself, nationalizing them under the guise of reorganization. The largest of the large and so belong to the state. All attacks on the banking sector, such as limiting acquiring fees, are just light slaps from the authorities, more like stroking. If something is taken away from usurers, then only in order to give more later. Money is everything, but banks have it and should be in excess.
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