Subject. Consumer lending and measures taken by financial regulators to develop the consumer lending market. Objectives. To reveal current trends and challenges in the development of the consumer lending market in the EAEU countries; to identify measures taken by regulators of the financial and banking sector to foster its development and reduce risks for borrowers. Methods. General methods of scientific cognition were applied, including comparison and generalization, as well as analytical, statistical and coefficient?based methods. The study drew on regulatory legal acts, official statistical sources and publications of the central banks of the EAEU countries, as well as scientific publications by foreign and Russian authors. Results. The main trends in the development of the consumer lending market in the EAEU countries between 2020 and 2025 have been identified. Based on correlation and regression analysis, it has been proven that in Kazakhstan and Russia, consumer loans were typically taken out by citizens not to purchase durable goods, but to maintain their current standard of living. Through comparative analysis, it was found that similar measures to regulate the consumer lending market were adopted across the EAEU countries. Conclusions. During the COVID-19 period and the accelerated adoption of digitalization in banking, the volume of high-margin consumer loans (for banks) increased significantly in the EAEU countries. In conditions where lenders’ policies were not always sound – with loans being granted without a proper assessment of clients’ financial capacity – this led to a rise in overdue debt. Against the backdrop of high policy rates and inflation, this poses a threat not only to the stability of the financial and banking sector, but also, in the future, to the sustainability of consumer demand and may lead to increased social tension in the event of mass borrower defaults. The EAEU countries are actively implementing similar measures to regulate the consumer lending market, including raising risk-weighting coefficients, adjusting debt burden limits, introducing self-blocking options for loan applications, establishing cooling-off periods and other regulatory measures.
Keywords: consumer credit, overdue debt, central bank, EAEU, lending limits
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