A new mechanism for debt restructuring through a single window may appear in the Russian Federation

In the autumn of 2026, a new mechanism for the comprehensive settlement of citizens' debts to creditors may be launched in Russia. The relevant bill has been submitted to the State Duma and provides for the creation of a system in which the debtor will be able to coordinate a restructuring plan with all creditors through one of them. This was reported by the Delovoy Peterburg newspaper on October 16.

The initiative is intended to be an alternative to bankruptcy of individuals and should simplify the procedure for borrowers who have obligations to several financial institutions. According to the draft, it is enough for the debtor to contact one of the creditors, who will be obliged to find the others within 10 days, inform them about the start of the procedure and agree on the terms of the restructuring.

The need for such a mechanism is related to the critical situation with the multi-creditworthiness of the population. According to the Central Bank, as of January 1, 2025, 46% of debtors have two or more loans, and 25% of borrowers with three or more debt obligations provide 50% of the total bank debt in the amount of 19 trillion rubles.

Nikolay Filippov, Director of Risk Methodology at the United Credit Bureau, said that the bureau's infrastructure is ready for additional work.

"In fact, we are talking about the process of interaction of the borrower with the entire market, in which one of his creditors acts as a "single window", and the BCI takes over the function of building communication. In this interaction, some new technological processes arise, for example, notifying creditors of events during the borrower's debt settlement procedure – its beginning and decisions taken," he explained.

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However, representatives of credit institutions express skepticism about the effectiveness of the innovation. According to Sberbank, in the first 8 months of 2025, only 24.5 thousand voluntary complex settlement transactions worth 11.3 billion rubles were conducted, while banks received more than 3 million restructuring applications.

Experts call the voluntary participation of creditors the key problem of the bill.

"This is not a mechanism for forced restructuring, as in a bankruptcy case, but only a tool for organizing negotiations. The relevance is greatly reduced due to the lack of sanctions for creditors who ignore the procedure. The pessimistic and most likely scenario is that the institute will be used extremely sparsely. Lenders, not seeing the benefits, will massively ignore notifications through the BCI, especially for borrowers who are unprofitable for them. As a result, the procedure will turn into a formality," said Maxima Legal lawyer Ivan Pervashov.

Roman Stepanov, General Director of the St. Petersburg Arbitration Manager Company, warns that the procedure may delay, but not solve the problem.

"This will help them solve their debt problems by changing the terms of their contracts. But it will get worse for another part of the citizens: instead of immediately going into bankruptcy, a person will spend time on a new procedure that will not help in the end, and they will go bankrupt anyway," he said.

On September 24, Izvestia got acquainted with the materials of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, from which it follows that the authorities plan to lower the threshold for VAT payments for small and medium-sized businesses from 60 million to 10 million rubles per year.

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