UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 18, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region-based borrowers’ mortgages amount to 1.862m RUR on average, 3.7% of loan repayments are by now past-due, the National Credit History Bureau reports.

According to the bureau, this percentage of debts is the lowest among all the popular retail loans at the moment.

All in all, the number of mortgages issued in Russia since the start of the year has gone up by 11%, whereas the number of unsecured loans dropped by 10% and that of car loans by 9%.

It is reported, however, that the quality of new mortgages has been deteriorating over the last two years. Only 0.2% of mortgage loan repayments were left unpaid for over ninety days as recently as 2012; the figure went up to 0.24% in 2013 and to 0.3% in 2014.

‘Given the population’s shrinking actual income, it would make sense for the creditors to weigh all the loan decision more carefully. While most banks improved their risk management on unsecured loans (traditionally the ones with the greatest share of NPLs), improvements are taking much longer to happen in the secured loan segment,’ says the bureau’s DG Alexander Vikulin.