MFO market cools: 2025 results
In 2025, the amount of microloans issued by microfinance organisations (MFOs) stabilised at around ₽0.5 trillion per quarter (₽2 trillion per year) after active growth in 2024. The expansion of the microloan portfolio significantly slowed from 10% in early 2025 to 0.7% by late 2025.
The cooldown was associated with a consistent escalation of measures to limit households’ over-indebtedness. The requirement that MFOs may not use unconfirmed data on borrowers’ incomes was introduced to prevent the understatement of the actual debt burden.
The macroprudential limits for car loans were set to prevent the transition of borrowers with a high debt service-to-income ratio (DSTI) to this segment. This helped reverse the trend. Specifically, the share of car loans granted to borrowers with high DSTI decreased from the peak level of 88% to 14%.
Considering the upcoming restrictions on the number of expensive microloans that a borrower may have at the same time, MFOs continue to actively advance products with a credit limit, seeking to attract and retain high-quality borrowers. Over the year, the portion of such microloans went up by 14 pp, accounting for 38% of total consumer lending.
In 2025, state micromortgage companies were opened in six Russian regions to implement subsidised mortgage programmes. Over the year, they issued mortgages worth a total of ₽2.7 billion, with the mortgage term and amount averaging 20 years and ₽6.8 billion, respectively.
More details are available in the publication MFO Market Trends in 2025.