Individuals to impose self-bans on loans
Any person will be able to secure him/herself from situations when fraudsters take out a loan on his/her behalf and to voluntarily refuse to conclude loan agreements. The State Duma adopted such law.
To “switch on” the mechanism, an individual will have to impose a special ban in his/her credit history via the Public Services Portal or at the multifunctional centre. It is sufficient to fill in a template application selecting the desirable ban conditions. An application is also needed to lift the ban. This service will be free and there will be no restrictions on the number of applications.
There are different categories of the ban: by the creditor type (a bank or a microfinance organisation) and by the method used to apply for the loan or microloan (offline and online or only online).
A person can cancel the self-ban at any time if he/she really wishes to obtain a loan or microloan. The ban will be lifted a day after the relevant information is included in the individual’s credit history. Such cooling period will help people make a better decision as to whether they need the loan or microloan.
Before granting consumer loans, banks and microfinance organisations will have to check whether the borrower’s credit history contains a self-ban. If there is a ban, the creditor should refuse to grant a loan. If, in spite of a ban, the creditor concludes an agreement, it will not be able to demand that the borrower perform the loan obligations.
The law will come into force on 1 March 2025. From this date, individuals will be able to file self-ban applications via the Public Services Portal. Such deferral is introduced in order to adopt a number of regulations and to further set up the Public Services Portal. Multifunctional centres should ensure that they can support self-bans before 1 September 2025. By this date, they need to prepare their systems and employees so that they are able to accept applications in an uninterrupted manner.