UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 12, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region is the Russian federal constituency with the fifth largest number of active loans, National Bureau of Credit History reports.

The overall loan amount reached 2.331bn RUR on January 1, 2016, including 1.209bn RUR worth of consumer loans and 1.122bn RUR worth of micro-financing agreements.

According to the Bureau, the figures for Russia on the whole came to 69.2bn RUR at the start of the year (up 16.7% compared with October 2014), including 35.3bn RUR worth of consumer loans (31,500 RUR per loan on average) and 33.8bn RUR worth of micro-financing agreements (12,400 RUR per agreement on average).

Short-term micro-financing options are the current market’s fastest-growing segment (+19.1%, or 5.4bn RUR); the consumer lending market rose by 14.5%, or 4.5bn RUR.