The five largest banks operating in Portugal have restructured more than 30,000 home loans, including under the government’s decree law that forces banks to do so in the case of families in trouble due to interest rate increases.
According to a survey carried out by PP, between communications made in press conferences or in written reply, banks have carried out 31,350 restructurings of housing loans.
Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) was the bank that restructured the most credits, with the president of the public bank, Paulo Macedo, stating at the press conference to present the results for the first quarter of this year that around 8,900 restructurings had been carried out, 900 of which under the decree-law in question.
In turn, the executive president of BCP, Miguel Maya, noted that the bank restructured 6,500 credits, 650 of which within the scope of the Government’s rule.
In a written reply sent to Pp, Santander Totta said it had made 7,900 renegotiations in the first quarter alone.
Using the same channel, Novo Banco said it had restructured 6,150 home loans in the first quarter of this year, citing the creation of “monitoring mechanisms and appropriate solutions” after the previous eurozone crisis cycles impacted interest rates.
Finally, BPI presented, between January and April, 1,900 renegotiated contracts.
At the press conference to present the first quarter results, in Lisbon, the bank’s president, João Pedro Oliveira e Costa, pointed out that the number of requests for credit restructuring has been going down. After in the first four weeks after the publication of the Government decree the bank received more than 1,000 requests per week, recently these requests have been below 100 weekly.
The expectation is that more mortgages will be reviewed in the coming months, since reference rates will continue to rise until the summer and there are contracts with indexing factors such as the 12-month Euribor that have not yet been reviewed.
According to the most recent data from the Bank of Portugal, referring to March, 41% of the amount of loans for permanent owner-occupied housing were indexed to the 12-month Euribor, while 33.7% were indexed to the 6-month Euribor and 22.9% to the 3-month Euribor.
