Financial organizations will be required to record and store conversations with borrowers
Starting August 5, new requirements will be introduced for banks and microfinance organizations regarding interactions with debtors. Now, when reminding about the return of an overdue loan and discussing debt repayment options with the borrower, companies must record and store information about the progress of the process for at least three years. Collection agencies already have similar obligations. According to the legislators, the new requirements will protect debtors from violations, insults, and threats when returning money. MK found out from experts whether this will work in practice.
Starting from August 5, it will become more difficult for financial institutions to operate. According to the law coming into force, creditor companies will have new obligations. First, they will have to purchase special equipment and software for recording and storing data.
Second, they will have to record all interactions with debtors or their representatives on audio, and also warn interlocutors that the recording is being made at the very beginning of the conversation. Such audio files will have to be stored on electronic media for at least three years.
Thirdly, credit and microfinance organizations will have to record all text, voice and other messages made in the context of interaction with debtors, the purpose of which is to recover overdue debt. Such recordings will also have to be stored for at least three years.
The Federal Bailiff Service will monitor compliance with these requirements.
Why these provisions are being introduced is clear: to improve customer safety. Even with debtors, financial organizations are required to interact correctly, within the law.
«Quite often, creditor companies use foul language in telephone conversations, threats to the life, health, property of the debtor or his relatives,» explains Anastasia Chumak, co-head of the investor protection practice at Intercession. «This is a direct violation of the law. Mandatory audio recording disciplines the creditor and forces him to act within the law.» The expert also draws attention to the fact that in addition to audio, creditor companies will have to record all text, voice and other messages during communication with the debtor. And if the latter believes that his rights have been infringed, these files can be used in court.
Elman Mekhtiev, founder of the Kredchek service, for his part, draws attention to the fact that such requirements are an innovation only for banks, while collection and microfinance organizations have long been obliged to keep records of all communications via telephone channels initiated by them for collection purposes. Moreover, collectors were required to keep these records for 3 years, and microfinance organizations — 6 months.
«The changes simply bring everyone to a common denominator: if you are engaged in collection by phone, be kind enough to keep the records so that you can check what and how was said during the conversation,» the expert explains. At the same time, according to him, banks used to record conversations «for quality control purposes,» and when the supervisory authorities came after an angry debtor's appeal, many referred to the fact that they were keeping records, but «what a shame,» they were not keeping them. Now such a trick won’t work!
The borrower doesn’t care who the collector is “on the other end of the line,” Mekhtiev continues: «It’s important for him that his rights are respected, and he’s unlikely to remember how much, who, and what should be stored. After all, for him, they all look the same — they want him to repay the debt on time and in full.”
The expert believes that the changes will help both borrowers and the supervisory authorities, and the creditor-collectors themselves. The former will receive more protection. The latter will receive more opportunities. And the third will receive the elimination of unscrupulous competitors by the state.
The introduced measure, in addition to the purely legal, has another side — financial. «New requirements for recording conversations mean only one thing for financial organizations — an increase in costs,» says Oleg Kalmanovich, chief analyst at Neomarkets. To comply with the provisions of the law, it is necessary, firstly, to purchase and configure equipment for recording conversations. Secondly, a significant expansion of the corporate IT infrastructure: servers, storage media, purchasing space in cloud storage. And, thirdly, it will be necessary to increase the wage fund for IT specialists and engineers of the appropriate qualifications on the company's staff. «In addition, the obligation to store documentation on debtors will force banks to expand physical storage — to support the archive,» the expert lists.
«Like all sellers who are always interested in finding a reason to increase prices, financiers, every time the requirements for their activities are tightened, talk about the rise in the cost of financial services,» says Elman Mekhtiev. But, according to him, the loans themselves «grow in price» much faster due to the cost of funding than due to the cost of collection. «And competition will not allow the rate to be raised even by a fraction of a percent,» the financier believes. «The only question is whether there is this competition.»