The game of raising: Russians are buying up bonds that caused the 2008 crisis
Russians are actively investing in bonds from loans, instruments very similar to those that caused the global crisis in 2008. The difference is that they used to be based on mortgages, but now they are based on consumer loans. The market for such bonds in the Russian Federation has grown fivefold in 2025, to 229 billion, and may increase fourfold in 2026. Moreover, a third of the buyers are private investors. Experts warn that the quality of loans in the pools is falling. At the same time, the Central Bank controls the market and plans to make changes in the coming months, the Bank of Russia said. Are there any risks for private investors and why it's not worth waiting for a repeat of 2008 anyway - in the Izvestia article.
Why are loan bonds becoming popular
Russian retail investors have begun to actively invest in the so-called multi-tranche securitization tools. This is the name of the mechanism that actually allows banks to "take risks off themselves," which explains the name. They can combine thousands of consumer loans into one pool and issue bonds based on it, which are divided into tranches (queues). Senior securities receive payments first, younger ones later. The latter have more risks, but also higher returns.
Such tools were in great demand a quarter of a century ago. They played a significant role in the development of the global financial crisis in 2008, said Alexander Abramov, Head of the Laboratory for the Analysis of Institutions and Financial Markets at the Presidential Academy.
In Russia, this market has grown fivefold in 2025 and reached 229 billion rubles, and in 2026 it may increase four more, approaching the 1 trillion mark, according to Expert RA.
The fivefold increase was no coincidence. Large banks have accumulated significant portfolios of unsecured retail loans, which are technically convenient to combine, explained Elena Marchuk, Deputy Chairman of the Board of National Savings Bank JSC. Loans place a heavy burden on capital, so securitization has transformed from a funding tool into a mechanism for releasing funds. Banks have been looking for a way to reduce capital pressure for a long time, said Denis Astafyev, fund manager and founder of the SharesPro fintech platform. It was in 2025 that Sberbank, Alfa-Bank and Gazprombank joined the market.
Regulatory changes have become an additional driver, Sberbank's press service added. The increased capital requirements of the Central Bank when holding unsecured loans on the balance sheet (regulations obliging banks to create more reserves for risky loans) have made securitization in demand, and simplification of transactions has increased their transparency.
The high rate also played a role, said Oleg Marikhin, Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations at the First Client Bureau. Nikita Borodanov, an analyst at Finam Financial Group, shares the same opinion: with record key and strict regulatory restrictions, securitization makes it possible to withdraw assets from the balance sheet.
Who buys bonds from loans
Along with the growth of the market, the structure of investors has also changed. Previously, a significant part of the issues were bought by banks themselves (those who formed the loan portfolio), but now private investors and NPFs have become the largest holders. By the end of 2025, the share of individuals reached 31%, NPFs — 25%, and the share of banks decreased to 13%, said Elena Marchuk.
The main buyer of such instruments today is a retail investor, confirmed Gleb Shevelenkov, director of the bond market at the Moscow Stock Exchange. However, it is important that these people are prepared to understand the complex structure of transactions and take risks into account, he noted.
The interest of private investors is primarily explained by the premium to profitability — about 2-4 percentage points relative to corporate bonds of a similar rating, Sberbank explained. At the same time, the investor does not receive an abstract obligation from the issuer, but a cash flow from a specific pool of assets, which requires a different approach to analysis.
The average size of transactions on such securities is usually 1-3 million rubles, said financial advisor and founder of Rodin.Capital Alexey Rodin. Investors should spend no more than 10% of their savings on buying high-risk bonds and not forget about the balance sheet, the expert warned.
Is the quality of credit pools deteriorating
Experts attribute the main risks not to the securitization technology, but to the quality of the underlying assets, that is, to the loans themselves. As the market approaches 1 trillion rubles, the key question is not whether growth is possible, but whether scaling will lead to a weakening of loan selection standards, Elena Marchuk emphasized. If pools with deteriorating payment discipline start to fall into bonds more often, with the economy slowing down, it is asset quality that will become the main source of stress, she noted.
The growth of the segment is already accompanied by an increase in defaults: in some issues in 2025, the share of non-payments reached 1.8% per month, said Svetlana Frumina, Head of the Department of Global Financial Markets and Fintech at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. This is not much yet, but a growth trend has begun to emerge. The reason is the high debt burden of borrowers against the background of consumer loan rates of 28-35%. At the moment, the situation is manageable, but the cost of an error in asset selection will increase, Denis Astafyev believes.
The default rate of consumer loan portfolios is growing, Sberbank acknowledged, but now it remains in a comfortable range. At the same time, the bank warns that if you start securitizing the "worst" loans or uncontrollably lower the retention threshold for the junior tranche, the quality of the pools will inevitably fall.
The regulator obliges banks with a loan portfolio that secures bonds to hold at least 5% of the riskiest securities. This is necessary to increase market transparency and protect the interests of investors. This is how the bank is interested in the quality of loans. Until recently, this threshold was 20% for non-mortgage securitization transactions, but since October 2025, the Central Bank has lowered this level, but only if the bank meets the asset quality criteria.
However, even with the market growing to 1 trillion rubles, banks still have sufficient assets to ensure high credit quality for their issues, Pavel Kashitsyn, Managing Director for Structured Finance Ratings at Expert RA agency, reassured. There are no signs of overheating of the market yet.
What mechanisms protect investors?
The main element of protection is risk sharing. The junior tranche, which usually remains with the bank issuing the securities, is the first to take on losses, explained Elena Marchuk.
Most transactions use reserve funds and an excessive interest rate spread (the difference between income from loans and expenses on bonds), Sberbank added.
In addition, there is a special mechanism that allows you to redistribute cash flows in the event of a sharp increase in loan delinquencies. This helps to protect investors from a complete loss of income. Banks (or bond issuers) are also required to provide regular reports on the status of the loan portfolio, allowing clients to assess returns under various default scenarios.
The Central Bank does not see significant risks in the mortgage-backed securities market, as the quality of these loans in Russia is high. The share of problem housing loans was 1.8% as of April 1, the regulator's press service told Izvestia. In addition, there is a guarantor for mortgage securities in the person of Dom.RF.
However, the issue of securities backed by consumer loans rather than mortgages is gaining popularity in Russia. Since the beginning of 2025, 320 billion rubles have been issued. But this is still a small amount compared to the total debt of Russians on loans.
However, the Central Bank is concerned that such instruments have recently been bought not only by institutional and retail investors, but also by banks. In this case, no additional reserves are formed for such securities, which were applied to loans before securitization. This allows market participants to avoid the requirement to create additional reserves, which increases the risks within the system. In this regard, the regulator is already making changes that will take effect in the coming months, the Central Bank said.
Will the 2008 crisis happen again
Securitized mortgage bonds and derivatives of more complex instruments became one of the reasons for the scale of the US housing market crisis in 2008. Banks sold them to investors all over the world, mixing junk loans with reliable ones and constantly repackaging them to hide the risks. In addition, credit institutions themselves actively bought such securities using borrowed funds. Due to the complexity of the structures, even professional investors did not know which securities the "bad" loans were in.
Agencies mistakenly assigned the highest rating to such assets, considering them to be comparable in reliability to government bonds. This misled pension funds and banks around the world, and they actively invested in such instruments. When heavily indebted borrowers stopped paying their mortgages en masse and housing prices in the United States began to fall, the value of securities practically dropped to zero. Since the bonds were held by large financial institutions everywhere, the collapse of the American housing market resulted in serious losses for the global economy. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the cumulative losses of the global financial system from the depreciation of such bonds could amount to up to $3.4 trillion over the period from 2007 to 2010.
However, there is no need to fear a repeat of the American scenario, the press service of the Bank of Russia assured. The risks of these securities in the Russian Federation are initially limited by the current measures of the Central Bank. In the American market, loans were issued to over-indebted borrowers (in Russia, limits were imposed on providing money to customers with a high debt burden) and then they were withdrawn from banks' balance sheets using such bonds. In Russia, credit institutions usually retain a significant portion of securitized securities, the regulator noted.
In addition, the practice of repackaging loan-backed securities for the issuance of new instruments is not common in the Russian market. In the USA at that time, financial institutions actively used such a scheme to relieve themselves of risks. This increased the interconnectedness of securitization market participants, made the sector less transparent to investors, and affected a wider range of participants as the shock spread, the Central Bank explained. The Russian market is transparent, its scale is small and does not pose systemic threats, the regulator noted.
The instruments that played a key role in 2008 are not used in the Russian market, Sberbank added. Our lending model is closer to the European one, which limits the likelihood of a bubble.
The crisis of 2008 occurred largely due to the fact that market participants did not understand which assets were inside structured securities, Denis Astafyev noted. In Russian practice, the composition of pools is disclosed regularly, the bank retains economic interest through the riskiest tranche, and rating agencies operate under the supervision of the Central Bank.
Even with an increase to 1 trillion rubles, the securitization market remains small relative to the entire bond market (over 30 trillion rubles), Alexander Abramov noted. At the same time, the main investors are wealthy individuals, and even the full materialization of credit risks will affect a narrow circle of investors, and not the entire banking system.
Experts agree: By itself, this tool will not provoke a crisis. However, financial turmoil in the past was not caused by technology per se, but by the accumulation of hidden imbalances. That is why the rapid growth of the market requires constant monitoring of asset quality and transparency of structures.
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