Careful, not repaid: Russians are being massively persuaded to bankruptcy
About 60% of individual bankruptcies in Russia are carried out with the support of intermediaries promising easy debt relief, market participants interviewed by Izvestia reported. The consequences can be disastrous — recognition of insolvency prevents you from getting a good job, renting a house and running a business. And in some cases, it leads to criminal liability for fraud. At the same time, the market of so-called loan sharks is practically unregulated. Who earns from the desperation of Russians and what other consequences bankruptcy brings — in the Izvestia article.
Who are the borrowers and what is the scale of the problem?
Unscrupulous consultants who promise citizens a quick and, most importantly, complete debt relief may be involved in 60% of the population's bankruptcies, analysts estimated. In 2025, 568 thousand citizens were declared insolvent, which is 31.5% more than a year earlier, according to the Federal Resource data. Thus, borrowers may be involved in about 340 thousand defaults.
It is difficult to determine how many procedures have been initiated under their influence due to the lack of official statistics. However, the SRO MiR estimated that such intermediaries are involved in at least 60% of bankruptcies among clients of MFIs. The situation is similar for banks and is even more acute, since large amounts of loans increase the attractiveness of such services, Maria Ibragimova, director of the Department for dealing with problematic debts of individuals at MTS Bank, agreed.
According to estimates by the National Association of Professional Collection Agencies (NAPCA), the average check for such "assistance" is about 300 thousand rubles, and the total annual turnover of this shadow market exceeds hundreds of billions of rubles.
At the same time, the problem concerns primarily the borrowers themselves. Many of them could have avoided bankruptcy if they had applied to the lender in a timely manner for restructuring or credit holidays.
Credit holidays are a temporary deferral of payments. The borrower may not repay the loan for six months without fines and penalties. They are most often used in case of job loss or reduced income. Interest continues to accrue during this period, so the overpayment on the loan increases. Restructuring, in turn, is a constant change in the terms of the loan, designed to facilitate the repayment of debt. For example, you can extend the loan term by reducing the monthly payment, or reduce the interest rate.
VTB's press service estimated that more than 70% of such procedures could have been prevented by contacting the bank early. Alexey Zlebkin, General Director of Finekva PCO, shares a similar opinion. According to his estimates, about half of the clients had the opportunity to settle debts without trial.
In about 70% of cases, people turn to consultants for help in negotiations with creditors, restructuring or installments, the NAPCA emphasized. However, the borrowers are tricking bankruptcy into being the only way out.
How does bankruptcy work?
The main tool of these "helpers" is aggressive advertising that promises full debt relief without focusing on the consequences. Citizens are attracted by slogans about "living from scratch," although they often conceal a full-fledged bankruptcy procedure with all the restrictions, said Denis Kuznetsov, director of Sberbank's Retail Recovery and Settlement division.
The consequences are much more serious than advertised. A person's credit rating then drops sharply, and the chances of getting a new loan within seven years will be minimal, the United Credit Bureau (OKB) said. In addition, information about bankruptcy is published in an open register, which can complicate the search for work, rental housing and running your own business, said Nikolai Filippov, Director of Risk Management, Methodology and Data Analytics at OKB.
Borrowers are often advised to stop communicating with lenders, hide their property, transfer assets to relatives, or apply for new loans and microloans to pay for the services of the borrowers themselves. Alexander Abramov, Director of the Legal Department of the Association of Banks of Russia, Veronika Burova, Chief Operating Officer of Summit Group, and Maxim Serebrov, CEO of PCO Dobrozaym, spoke about such schemes.
However, if the court uncovers such schemes, the person may not be released from debt. Five years ago, debt cancellation was refused in about 5% of cases, today in some regions this figure reaches 15-20%, said Anton Palyulin, a lecturer at Synergy University and a human rights activist.
In addition, such schemes are increasingly becoming the basis for initiating administrative and criminal cases. Depending on the composition of the violation, a person may face fines of up to 500 thousand rubles, forced labor or imprisonment for up to six years, the expert warned.
Unjustified bankruptcies also lead to an increase in the cost of loans for all clients, added Alexander Ermolaev, head of the USV collection agency. Lenders put risks in their products in advance, which increases loan overpayments for everyone.
How to deal with the shadow market of assistants
Since the beginning of 2026, new requirements for advertising bankruptcy-related services have already entered into force. It is now forbidden to guarantee full debt cancellation and urge citizens to stop paying loans, the press service of the Bank of Russia explained. It has also become mandatory to warn in announcements about the consequences and point out free ways to settle debts.
But the main problem is that the field of such counseling still lacks professional standards and strict control. This is what allows unscrupulous companies to operate freely in the market, misleading customers, the NAPCA said.
The first step could be unified standards of debt counseling, which would separate conscientious professionals from those who make money from the financial difficulties of citizens, Alexander Abramov believes.
Another measure may be the mandatory comprehensive debt settlement before the bankruptcy procedure begins. Starting in 2023, the borrower can come to his bank and ask to arrange negotiations with all creditors at once if the client has loans from different organizations. The whole procedure takes about 30 days. The problem is that the standard is still voluntary, and not all market participants have joined it. The State Duma is currently considering a bill that will make this mechanism mandatory; the exchange of information between creditors will take place through the BCI. This will allow Russians to avoid bankruptcy more often, explained Igor Ermak, Director of Operational Risks and Fraud at Cyberbird fintech Group.
In addition, the creation of a public registry of organizations providing bankruptcy services to citizens, with the opportunity to get acquainted with reviews and court decisions for each company, can help solve the problem, said Nina Gukasova, director of the FMCF program for improving financial literacy of the population at the Presidential Academy.
Bankruptcy should remain a last resort for truly desperate situations, and not turn into a commercial service that is imposed on people in a state of financial stress, concluded Artem Bykov, CEO of Moneyman. This shadow market can only be stopped in a comprehensive way — through regulation, control of advertising and improving financial literacy.
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