Record High Number Of Russians Bankrupt Since Beginning Of This Year

The leader is the Moscow region.

Russians have set a new record for the number of personal bankruptcies. In the first six months of 2023, the courts recognized 162.9 thousand people as bankrupt, or 34% more than in the same period last year, says the Moscow Times website.

The leaders in the number of bankrupt citizens are the Moscow region (7.97 thousand) and Moscow (7.75 thousand). They are followed by the Krasnodar region (7.74 thousand), the Sverdlovsk region (6.13 thousand), and Bashkortostan (5.79 thousand).

The vast majority of bankruptcy cases (96.5%) were initiated by citizens themselves, while the rest were initiated by the Federal Tax Service and bankruptcy creditors.

In total, since the introduction of the institution of judicial bankruptcy of individuals in October 2015, 916 thousand Russians have declared themselves financially insolvent.

In turn, out-of-court bankruptcy for six months of 2023 were able to use 5.13 thousand people, and another 2.17 thousand were denied, follows from the data of the federal resource.

In total, from September 2020 to June this year, 18.7 thousand Russians with a total debt of 6.44 billion rubles, which is an average of 344.4 thousand per person underwent this procedure.

The number of personal bankruptcies will continue to grow by 30-40% per year, and only the workload of courts and arbitration managers can prevent this, says Alexei Yukhnin, head of the Federal Resource. Elman Mehtiyev, President of the NAPCA SRO, estimates that about 9 million borrowers are currently experiencing repayment problems, which is comparable to last year's and the year before's figures.

"In general, the solvency of Russians is now at a stable level. In addition, as practice shows, citizens switch to a savings model of behavior during the crisis, which often allows them to free up funds and repay loans ahead of schedule," Mehdiyev said.

So far, the situation with the solvency of Russians does not raise concerns, confirms Anton Tabakh, chief economist of the rating agency Expert RA. According to him, the main indicators of creditworthiness are not deteriorating.

This is due, among other things, to the conservative policy of banks and the control of the Central Bank, which imposes limits on the issuance of risky loans to cool the retail credit market, said Alexei Volkov, marketing director of the National Bureau of Credit Histories (NBCH).