Russian Consumer Lender Prepares Massive Debt Portfolio Sale

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

I?m being stalked by Russia.

It started off innocently enough. At age 4 I spilled some cheery Kool-Aid on the new shag carpeting in the living room. Russia countered with Mikhail Gorbachev. We both hate Yakov Smirnov. And last week, when I idly suggested that I needed to drop a few pounds before Hallowe?en ? Russia tried to beat me to the punch with this:

Home Credit and Finance Bank (HCFB), a Russian unit of Czech financial group PPF, plans to sell its portfolio of ?bad? credit by the end of October, according to the official schedule of the tender that the company started on Aug. 3.

The Moscow-based lender, which specializes in high-risk loans and offers express crediting via retail chains, is hoping to improve its lending processes by focusing on higher yielding, less risky businesses such as credit card loans.

HCFB wouldn?t disclose the total volume of the portfolio that?s up for sale. The debts, however, are split into several blocks according to overdue periods and the geographic regions from which the debtors come, and the blocks will be sold separately so that several companies can win part of the overall tender.