Market-Rate Mortgage Borrowers More Active in Early Repayment

In 2025, every second VTB client who took out a mortgage at a market rate regularly made partial early payments. Every fifth such borrower fully repaid the loan ahead of schedule. For comparison, in 2024, only one in ten categories of borrowers with market conditions fully closed their mortgage early.

More than 54% of clients who took out market-rate mortgages in 2025 initially planned to accelerate payments and repaid the loan on average five times faster than the established schedule. Despite a decrease in the overall share of those making additional payments, the average size and frequency of such contributions increased.

Bank analysts note that two factors influenced the statistics: clients« desire to get rid of expensive debt faster and the growing popularity of refinancing, which was observed from the second half of the year.

The behavior of borrowers under preferential programs turned out to be radically different. The share of those making additional payments among them decreased from 46% to approximately 29%, and the indicator of full early loan closure was close to zero.

«In the new conditions, for borrowers with a market rate, early repayment serves as a tactical response to its high cost,» commented Alexey Okhorzin, senior vice president, head of the retail business products department at VTB. «Preferential programs remove the need for haste, allowing clients to direct free money to deposits or other investment instruments.»

In total, in 2025, about 8.3 thousand clients took out market-rate mortgages at VTB. Over two years, the average loan amount under these programs decreased by approximately 20%, reaching 3.3 million rubles (approximately $36,700 at current rates). The total volume of partial and full early payments for the past year amounted to about 8 billion rubles (approximately $88.9 million at current rates).