Trend for lower interest rates on consumer loans continues

In 2016 Q4, credit institutions continued to reduce their interest rates on consumer loans. Thus average market effective interest rates (EIR) fell for almost every type of loan extended by credit institutions against 2016 Q3 statistics (by 0.2-2/2 pp). This reduction is even larger if compared with 2015 Q4 (by 0.6-7 pp).

Compared with the same period in 2015, 2016 Q4 witnessed EIR reduction in 17 out of 20 categories of consumer loans. The upper bound of average market EIR decreased by over 6.5 pp (down to 29.7%).

The trend to lower interest rates on microloans which was took shape at the end of 2015 is also gaining momentum. In 2016 Q4, the interest rates on 11 out of 21 categories of consumer loans of microfinance organisations decreased in the range of 0.4 pp to 7.7 pp against 2016 Q3. POS loans showed the greatest reduction (by 2.8-6.8 pp). Compared with the same period in 2015, 2016 Q4 saw the EIR reduction in 10 out of 16 categories of consumer loans (by over 10.8 pp for unsecured consumer microloans worth over 100,000 rubles extended for a term of more than a year).