Photo: Sergey Elagin/Business Online
By mid-October, against the background of an increase in the key rate, the weighted average mortgage rate exceeded 23%. In the context of the rising cost of housing loans, it is becoming urgent to find alternatives to current housing loans.
Thus, Senior Vice President of Sberbank Oleg Ganeev spoke about the possibilities of Islamic mortgages. He said that her extradition is now underway in Bashkiria, Dagestan, and Tatarstan, and the program is expected to be extended to Chechnya. BEAC has the most applications for loans under development programs from the regions of the North Caucasus, primarily for the development of the residential sector and the tourism cluster.
According to Ganeev, Sberbank is now trying to harmonize the sets of preferences that are available in traditional products — mother capital, various preferential interest rate programs and tax refunds. The Vice-President of the Savings Bank also stressed that the Islamic mortgage does not involve the application of an interest rate, instead a mark-up on real estate is used.
— The key feature of the Islamic mortgage is that it is interest-free. But in its framework, in practice, you can buy real estate only where the bank indicates,” said Alexander Razuvaev, a member of the supervisory board of the Guild of Financial Analysts and Risk Managers.
— You cannot get a loan in an Islamic mortgage. The bank first buys the property from the seller, then resells the object to the client at an inflated price, and he already pays the value of the property in equal installments within the agreed period.
“SP”: Is it possible to use some elements of an Islamic mortgage in other non-Muslim regions?
— I think that the regions are still carefully watching so that the margin for an Islamic mortgage is not too large. Given that the BEAC is actively engaged in this and the head of the bank, German Gref, is lobbying for it, it is likely that this will work throughout Russia, given that Muslims live everywhere in our country, but, in principle, anyone can take out such a mortgage. However, so far it works only in four regions.
It should be noted that Islamic mortgages are a part of Islamic banking and Islamic finance in general. Within their framework, investments are possible only in authorized shares, where securities of a business engaged in the production of alcohol and tobacco products, and pig breeding cannot enter. This is a whole segment with its own rules, in general, a large part of global finance.
Against the background of cooperation within the framework of BRICS, I hope that this will work. Islamic Banking in Russia was conceived as a circumvention of sanctions and an influx of money from the Middle East, including from the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Ak Bars is also actively working in this direction, in addition to Sberbank. In general, Russia can raise up to $11 billion with the help of Islamic finance.
Zarita Akmatova, head of the Planeta 312 real estate agency, explains that preferential programs (family, rural and others) do not apply to Islamic mortgages, and not all banks allow the use of maternity capital to pay for such a mortgage.
In general, the borrower has less choice than with a traditional mortgage, and foreigners cannot use an Islamic mortgage. Among the advantages, the expert noted that the borrower is not obliged to insure life and real estate, which reduces overall costs, and the bank is responsible for the legal purity of the transaction and possible problems with real estate.
The opposite opinion about an alternative type of mortgage was expressed by the chairman of the Russian Economic Society named after S.F. Sharapov, Professor, Doctor of Economics Valentin Katasonov.
— The Islamic mortgage project, which is part of Islamic banking, is incorrect. I was previously engaged in Islamic banking and talked to Muslims who have good financial training, they confirmed this. Islamic banking is a credit transaction without interest, but it’s still just an external cover.
It is better for us to develop sovereign, all-Russian banking instead, and it is more useful to turn to the usual preferential mortgage. It should be noted that Islamic banking exists mainly in those countries where there is an excess of oil, large revenues from production and its exports, including in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
It is possible to solve the housing issue, but in other ways. For example, in Soviet times there was an alternative to mortgages — cooperative apartments. I personally paid only 1% of my salary (about 3 rubles per month) for it, and received a cooperative apartment in 1986. It is strange that no one remembers the Soviet experience.