To whom is the crisis and a drop in income, and to whom – extra opportunities to earn. Russian banks, many of which have fallen under Western sanctions, seem to have decided to recoup the Russians.
Here you have denials of credit holidays, and tricks with exchange rates, and increased interest on bank transfers. As they say, a complete set.
According to experts, today at least 7 million citizens are experiencing difficulties with servicing bank loans. And, given that in the near future the growth of real incomes of the population is certainly not expected, we can safely assume that in the near future several million more Russians will move into the category of problem debtors. This is confirmed by the official data of the Central Bank. In particular, according to the regulator, the share of consumer loans for which a payment was missed for the first time in March and April amounted to 7.5%. It should be noted that in just two months this figure increased by more than 2% – from 5.3%.
Reduce the debt burden on citizens called credit holidays introduced by the government. Only, as in the case of a similar measure introduced in the “covid years”, everything once again went wrong as it was announced. Analysts have calculated that today the percentage of approved applications for loan holidays is only 30-50%. This is not surprising. The fact is that only borrowers whose income in 2022 decreased by more than 30% can apply for vacations. Moreover, this fact must have official confirmation, which is not always possible to obtain. In addition, you can get vacations only for those loans, the amount of which fits into the established loans – each type of loan has its own limit. For example, for a car loan, it is only 700 thousand rubles, for a mortgage – 3 million rubles, for a consumer loan – 300 thousand. So even if you lost your job and you have nothing to buy food, and you have a consumer loan in the amount of 250 thousand rubles, you are not entitled to any holidays.
And those who still received the cherished holidays can hardly be called lucky. Yes, it will be possible not to make payments for several months. But vacations are vacations, and no one canceled the interest. So in the end, the bank will still take its toll.
In this regard, the International Confederation of Consumer Societies (ConfOP) appealed to the Central Bank and the government with a request to change the mechanism for providing credit holidays. In particular, social activists propose to set limits not on the amount of the loan, but only on the remainder of the debt. A decrease in income is considered not the financial situation of an individual, but the family as a whole, taking into account the total family income. This idea has already been supported in the State Duma. True, the banking lobby is unlikely to miss such proposals. Bankers, on the contrary, have already started talking about the fact that such measures will negatively affect the financial condition of banks and increase the cost of loans.
At the same time, bankers do not forget about their profit for a minute, trying to get it at any cost. One of the most common ways to earn money is by cunning “scams” with exchange rates. Today become especially popular are UnionPay cards issued in Russia. “I got a UnionPay card less than a month ago to pay for tickets and book accommodation abroad,” a client of MTS Bank with the nickname Maxim Burikov shared on social networks. – I chose tickets, tried to pay, a refusal came. Refusal to operate is a common procedure, even if the money is debited, they are immediately returned … They returned it, but 110 thousand rubles less.”
The meaning of bankers’ earnings is simple: air tickets are paid in foreign currency, rubles are debited from the card at the purchase rate set by the bank. When an airline refunds money, the refund is also made in foreign currency. The bank, having received the currency, transfers it to the client’s ruble account, but – attention! – already on sale! Have you noticed that today bankers set buy / sell rates with a huge difference? Here you have those very “lost” 110 thousand. Good profit on a simple operation.
Another popular trick is the increased interest for transferring currency from one bank account to another. If for ruble accounts there is a system of fast payments with minimal commissions, then it is not used for foreign currency accounts. As a result, when the author of these lines decided to transfer 100 euros from the Sberbank account to the Uralsib account, I had to pay 35 euros of commission. And it is impossible to withdraw cash that ended up on accounts after March 1, 2022. This is what bankers use.
Perhaps the furthest went Tinkoff Bank, which last week, without hesitation, announced the introduction of a commission of 12% per annum for servicing foreign currency bank accounts over 1 thousand USD. Commissions have also been introduced at Raiffeisen Bank, Citibank, Bank St. Petersburg, Uralsib, RNKB, and Promsvyazbank. At the same time, the legislation obliges the bank to pay interest on deposits and accounts, which is why negative rates are actually prohibited. Therefore, banks go to tricks: 0.01% – interest and 0.2-0.5% – commission for storage or for operations.