In December 2024, the average total cost of a loan in the credit card segment set a record, increasing to 38.8%, according to the data of the Scoring Bureau credit bureau. Invest-Foresight asked Agwan Mikaelyan, a member of the board of directors of AKG Finexpertiza, whether this will affect the demand for credit products and how not to get into trouble by taking a credit card.
– What, first of all, can explain the sharp jump in December? Banks have no money?
– No, banks in the past year, on the contrary, have record profits. As for credit cards and interest, they just recorded the maximum amount. But the cost of servicing credit cards grew continuously. To be clear: the average interest on credit cards at a time when the refinancing rate was 7% was about 18-20%. That is, the refinancing rate multiplied by two and a half. If now our refinancing rate is 21%, then the interest on credit cards about 40 per annum would not surprise anyone.
This point, these numbers were reached not at once, in leaps and bounds. Because loan rates grew along with the refinancing rate, this is quite obvious.
– Will it continue to grow?
– There are some conditions under which the credit card is serviced. The expiration of the card comes, a new card appears. Accordingly, on new conditions. And a person can only re-issue the card by accepting new conditions.
– But December itself isn’t such a normal month either…
– In December 2024, the percentage is so maximum, indeed, for other reasons. First, banks had maximum expectations. December is the time of the highest spending, the peak of spending in no period has the same value as in December. People buy gifts, people buy vouchers, visit each other, travel, spend a lot.
At this moment, money is the maximum demand. And where is the maximum demand, there is the maximum price. This is the law of the market.
– In general, in 2024, the total cost of loans in the credit card segment increased by 9.7%, for this type of loans the percentage is about 27-28% per annum. Despite such rates, will people continue to take loans?
– See what the situation is. We already have a certain style of consumption, it has already developed. It takes a decent amount of time to change the style of consumption. That is, neither in a month, nor in two, nor in a year it cannot be broken.
But the fact that sooner or later a person will rest, will begin to understand that he can barely serve his credit card… Barely – by this I understand that a person in his pocket no longer has such opportunities to repay the loan as before. In general, only in this case will a person change his strategy or consumption model. This is a very conservative thing in fact, since you get used to the good very quickly, and you wean yourself from it very slowly. This is a consumer axiom.
So far, despite the fact that a special military operation is underway, the overwhelming majority does not perceive the situation as force majeure in the economic sphere.
– Is that not the right approach?
– It’s both good and bad at the same time. This is good in part because people cannot curb their desire to consume. And the bad thing is that when the paradigm of consumption changes, then discontent arises. When a person does not perceive the situation as a crisis, he has no desire to change anything.
Therefore, now no one is tempted to somehow force people to change their consumption strategy, as the Central Bank wanted to do at the expense of expensive loans.
It assumed that high loans would change the consumption model. No consumption – no demand for credit resources. Accordingly, the economy will cool down. The fact that at the same time the economy may begin to collapse does not bother the regulator very much, since he manages, roughly speaking, six hundred large enterprises that are of interest to him and that determine the degree of health of the economy, everything else is almost outside the sphere of interest.
– Has the situation changed?
– Now the situation is not like that! Because you can not close people from consumption. Firstly, incomes have really grown, we have already talked about this. A very large part of the country’s population has average salaries of more than 200 thousand rubles. Previously, they did not receive this money, these are new consumers who first had such opportunities. Will they, having received such money, choose not to consume, but to postpone it? It is unlikely, especially since they, in fact, never had such money.
In this situation, no matter how much you raise the rate, people who have never had such income will not change the new consumption model. In fact, they are unlikely to be able to put in their heads that the rate on a credit card is 40%. Well, even if 40% – so what? As long as there is enough money for consumption, they will spend.
– What good and bad features do credit cards have?
– Credit cards are good for what you consume today and now. And you do not need to save, to waste time on getting what you want. And for many today, needs are formed faster than opportunities arise. Therefore, a credit card is, first of all, a tool for meeting your needs in the current absence of opportunities.
If a person does not know how to count very well, and there are many such people now, if he is financially illiterate, then he just gets into all sorts of terrible financial stories.
– It turns out that cards are bad not on their own, but at the expense of those who, possessing them, do not have sufficient financial literacy?
– I would not say that this is purely a matter of financial literacy. The question is that teaching people to match their position is a very important point. But we don’t have a single mechanism to teach that. This upbringing does not exist, but it would be the most correct: the understanding that if you cannot repay this loan in, say, six months, for example, then do not take it, it is meaningless.
– And yet, what advice can you give borrowers before choosing a credit card?
– Absolutely traditionally – it is necessary to clearly understand how long the credit card will be repaid. A person, in fact, must write on a piece of paper that, for example, from January 1, 2025 to January 2028, I have to pay so much money every month to close this card, having spent everything from it once.
If everyone writes such paper to themselves before taking a credit card for one-time needs, then it seems to me that 15-20% will have no desire to take it.
You need to think and answer yourself the question about your income level and the stability of this income. Well, the third point, universal, let’s also call it related to financial and consumer literacy: you need to ask yourself a question: do I really need this particular product or item for which I want to spend credit money?
Do I need at any costs to take a credit card? The child went to college, or, for example, a child enters a paid one: I will die, but I will pay. But you can start paying for tuition, and if you don’t manage to pay further? Will the child be expelled?
– Relatively speaking, it turns out that for those people who take credit cards in order to “borrow” before paycheck, there are no problems with them, the main thing is not to get addicted?
– Exactly! If today, a week before paycheck, you need to buy a conditional kettle, you buy it and do not take anything else to it, then this is normal. I received my salary, during the interest-free period I returned it to the card – then really no problems. In fact, all the questions and all the problems the credit cards have are psychological ones. And all the benefits are psychological, too.