Macroprudential measures: how the central bank slows lending without touching the key rate

Macroprudential measures are a set of tools the Bank of Russia uses to make particular types of lending more expensive for a bank in capital terms, or to cap the share of risky loans outright, without changing the key rate. The logic is simple: the rate acts on the whole economy at once and in the same way, whereas overheating usually builds up in a narrow segment — say, unsecured consumer loans to borrowers with a heavy debt burden. Macroprudential calibration is targeted: it cools precisely that segment without slowing corporate lending and investment.

Three layers of regulation that should not be confused

Microprudential regulation looks at the individual bank: does it have enough capital and liquidity to survive on its own. Macroprudential regulation looks at the system: what happens if all banks build up the same type of risk at the same time and then all start to unwind it at the same time. Monetary policy stands apart — the key rate and communication, which deal with inflation and aggregate demand.

The distinction matters in practice. A bank may be entirely healthy by its own ratios, yet its growth will still be restricted if the whole system is simultaneously ramping up mortgages with a low down payment. And the reverse holds too: an easing of macroprudential requirements does not mean an easing of monetary policy — these are different decisions with different horizons.

Risk-weight add-ons: capital as the price of behaviour

The main market-based tool is add-ons to risk weights. When a bank issues a loan, it is obliged to hold capital against it. The add-on increases the weight of the asset in the calculation, which means the loan starts to "eat up" more capital and therefore earns a lower return on that capital. The regulator does not ban the loan — it makes it unprofitable. The bank decides for itself: shrink the segment, raise the rate for the borrower or sacrifice some of its capital adequacy ratio.

The add-ons are arranged as a matrix: by the combination of the borrower's debt burden and, for secured loans, the loan-to-value ratio (LTV). The worse the combination, the heavier the add-on. The capital buffer accumulated through the add-ons can be released by the regulator in a crisis — and then the system gets capital freed up all at once to support lending.

Macroprudential limits: a direct ban on a share of lending

Where add-ons work too slowly, macroprudential limits (MPL) are applied — a quantitative restriction on the share of loans with specified characteristics in a bank's quarterly portfolio. This is no longer a price but a ceiling: the limit cannot be exceeded even if the bank is prepared to hold any amount of capital against the risk. The mechanism was originally applied to unsecured consumer loans; the right to extend it to mortgages and car loans was later enshrined in a separate law.

The effect of the limits shows up fastest in lending statistics, not in rates. The bank stops approving applications of a certain profile, the portfolio shifts towards high-quality borrowers, and the average loan size and the approval rate fall.

The debt burden ratio — the axis of the whole structure

Almost all of the tools listed rest on the debt burden ratio (PDN): the ratio of a borrower's mandatory payments on all loans to their confirmed income. That is why the rules on income, on the ways of confirming it and on accounting for loans taken out by others are not a technical detail but the thing that determines how tight the whole system is. Widening the list of acceptable sources of income confirmation loosens the framework, narrowing it tightens the framework, even though formally no add-on has been changed.

What this means for the investor

For a holder of bank shares, the macroprudential framework is a brake on the pace of portfolio growth and, indirectly, on the dividend base. Capital that has gone into buffers against the add-ons has not gone into payouts. It is worth looking at the dynamics of capital adequacy and the structure of lending in the financial statements rather than at the profit line alone: issuer profiles and financial statements show this earlier than the distribution decision does. It is useful to compare the valuation of the stock — 3,92 — with the expected pace of portfolio growth, not the past pace; the profiles of SBER and VTBR react to such decisions differently because of the different structure of their loan portfolios.

For a bondholder, another channel matters more: a cooling of retail lending reduces consumer demand and, with a lag, inflationary pressure — that is, it indirectly affects rate expectations and the OFZ curve. But the link is not mechanical: a macroprudential decision neither replaces nor predicts a rate decision.

The nearest payouts in the banking sector are convenient to track in the dividend calendar:

The full list of issuers is in the stocks section, and the regulator's decisions and the sector's reaction are in the news.

How to read news of a new measure

It is useful to break the announcement down into steps every time. Step 1: which segment is affected — unsecured retail, mortgages, car loans, corporate debt. Step 2: the tool — an add-on (a price) or a limit (a ceiling). Step 3: the direction — a tightening or a release of the buffer. Step 4: the date it takes effect, because banks start restructuring their lending in advance, and part of the effect is already priced into quotes by the time of publication.

Definitions of PDN, LTV, the countercyclical buffer and the capital adequacy ratios are collected in the glossary — which also explains how a capital buffer differs from an impairment provision.