When central and eastern Europe slid into recession in 2009, there were predictions that the consumer lending industry, introduced in the region only in the past decade, would fail its first major test. Instead, specialist lenders using merchant point-of-sale networks to finance purchases of consumer durables imported high-technology models of credit risk analysis and combined them successfully with knowledge of the local markets. Home Credit Group, part of the PPF investment vehicle founded by Czech entre preneur Petr Kellner and active from his home market, through Ukraine, Belarus and Russia to Kazakhstan, was one of those success stories. Consumer lending is in theory a high-risk, high-margin business, but the group's non-performing loan rates, especially in Russia, actually remained lower than the average for conventional retail banks.
展开▼
