Eurobank subsidiary gets permit to manage NPLs
Eurobank Financial Planning Services (FPS), is the second bad-loan management firm to obtain a license from the Greek authorities to operate in the local market. It follows the permit issued to Cepal, a joint venture by Alpha Bank and Aktua.
The licensing of the second company has come several months after it applied for the permit and this is attributed to the particularly demanding institutional framework set for the licensing of firms that manage nonperforming loans, which has in practice deterred several interested parties.
This conclusion is confirmed by the report of an independent consultant that has studied the regulatory frameworks of about 10 European countries, including Ireland, Spain and Romania.
The conditions set are so tough that although FPS constitutes the evolution of existing Eurobank subsidiaries it took many months for it to get the approval to operate. Today FPS possesses the necessary structure to start work immediately, gradually undertaking Eurobank’s entire bad-loan portfolio. Its objective is to manage loans by other banks too, from the huge pool of NPLs in Greece that now add up to 107 billion euros after their increase by 1.5 billion in the first couple of months of 2017.
