Banks worry over sudden bad loan spike in January

Nonperforming loans last month posted a major spike of almost 1 billion euros, reversing the downward course set in the last few months of 2016. This has generated major concerns among local lenders regarding the achievement of targets for reducing bad loans, as agreed with the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) of the European Central Bank for the first quarter of this year.

Bank sources say that after several months of stabilization and of a negative growth rate in new nonperforming exposure,the picture deteriorated rapidly in January, as new bad loans estimated at 800 million euros in total were created.

This increase in a period of just one month is considered particularly high, and is a trend that appears to be continuing this month as well. Bank officials attribute the phenomenon to uncertainty from the government’s inability to complete the second bailout review, fears for a rekindling of the crisis and mainly the expectations of borrowers for extrajudicial settlements of bad loans.

Senior bank officials note that a large number of borrowers will not cooperate with their lenders in reaching an agreement for the restructuring of their debts, in the hope that the introduction by the government of the extrajudicial compromise could lead to better terms and possibly even to a debt haircut

Banks further observe that the issue of the extrajudicial settlement, along with the matter of the deferred tax assets for the tackling of banks’ losses from the write-off or sale of bad loans, are of major significance to the general issue of dealing with the NPL problem, so they have to be arranged rapidly.

Even more important to the banking sector is the completion of the pending bailout review, as uncertainty and the re-emergence of fears over a possible Greek exit from the eurozone have frozen the market and encouraged many people to avoid paying their dues in anticipation of negotiations.

This unexpected deterioration in the quality of loan portfolios in recent weeks has banks on edge, as NPLs will have to be reduced by 2.5 billion euros by end-March, which will be particularly difficult to achieve given the fresh addition of another 800 million euros.