Individuals now able to impose self-bans on loans
Starting from 1 March, individuals can use the Public Services Portal to voluntarily prohibit themselves from entering into loan or microloan agreements in order to be protected against loan fraud.
To ‘turn on’ the mechanism, an individual will have to impose a special ban, which will be recorded in his/her credit history. There are different categories of a self-ban: by creditor type (a bank or a microfinance organisation) and by way of applying for a loan or a microloan (offline and online or only online).
In case a person actually wishes to obtain a loan, he/she will be able to cancel the self-ban at any time through submitting an application via the Public Services Portal and signing it with an enhanced digital signature (it can be created free of charge in the Goskey application), which is an additional measure of protection against fraudsters. The ban will be lifted a day after the relevant information is included in the individual’s credit history. This cooling-off period will help people make more balanced decisions as to whether they need to take out a loan or a microloan.
Before granting consumer loans, banks and microfinance organisations will have to check whether the borrower’s credit history contains information on a self-ban. If a self-ban has been imposed, the creditor must refuse to issue a loan. If the creditor concludes a loan agreement despite there being a ban, it will not be able to demand that the borrower fulfil his/her loan obligations.
Individuals will later be able to set a self-ban at multifunctional centres, which must start providing this service by 1 September 2025. By this date, they will have to prepare their systems and employees for receiving self-ban applications in an uninterrupted manner.
For more details on the self-ban mechanism, see the Bank of Russia website.