Page 87 - RusRPTJul21

8.1.2 Loans
Unsecured retail lending continued to grow at a strong pace in May, and mortgages slowed down a bit after a record growth for 2021 in April. Corporate lending also increased markedly, but less than a month earlier.
In May, the growth rate of unsecured consumer lending rose further - up to 2.2% (according to preliminary data) from 1.6% in April. To mitigate risks, the Bank of Russia previously made a decision to put into effect from 1 July 2021 restraining macroprudential measures providing for the application of premiums to risk ratios at the level of effective before the pandemic.
In May, the corporate portfolio grew quite actively (+518bn rubles, or up 1.1%), although this is also lower than the result of April (2.5%), when a number of large transactions were financed. In May portfolio growth was mainly associated with lending to large companies from various industries (transport, retail, oil and gas), as well as financing housing developers (an increase of over RUB100bn).
In May, the issuance of retail loans by Russian banks exceeded RUB1 trillion again with RUB1.13bn of loans, but did not break they did not reach the April record levels, due to the long 10 days holiday declared by president Vladimir Putin as part of an anti-coronavirus measure.
May lending was down 12% from loans extended in April of RUB1.19 trillion. Nevertheless this May loans was still 120% more than in May a year earlier – a crisis year due to the pandemic.
In total, since the beginning of the year, the volume of retail loans reached RUB5.3 trillion. For comparison: for the same period of 2020, banks issued loans only for RUB3.3 trillion.
According to Frank RG, as cited by RBC, sales slowed in May in almost all retail lending segments, although in absolute terms they were above the 2020 monthly average.
The volume of loans issued in cash in May amounted to RUB575.5bn (−6.5% compared to April), and the number of contracts concluded was RUB1.8mn (−1.4%).
Mortgage loans fell by more than 20% m/m in May: banks issued RUB148,500 new agreements worth a total of RUB439.3bn.
In May, Russians took out RUB82,400 car loans worth a total of RUB91.8bn, which is 6.5% less than in April.
Point-of-sale (POS) lending (for the purchase of goods) in May increased, despite the reduction in working days: the volume of loans was up in May by 7.1% m/m to RUB25.5bn.
Going forward analysts are expecting a boost to mortgage lending in June as that is the last month of the government subsidised programme for
87 RUSSIA Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com