Russian banks are providing more and more ‘bad' mortgage credits

As if bad consumer credit, which plagues the Russian retail banking sector were not enough, a new crisis is looming, this time on the mortgage market. Or so the experts say. Igor Kuzin, board chairman at Delta Credit bank said this week that the local mortgage market may soon experience a crisis similar to that suffered by the United States earlier this year. The U.S. mortgage crisis was a result of simplified credit conditions and mortgage loans that required no down payment, which led to an insolvency crisis. Now Kuzin says that the same may be happening in Russia. Moreover, he claims that while "consumer crediting may survive the crisis of insolvency, for the mortgage market such crisis would be systemic".