The five largest banks operating in Portugal have restructured more than 30,000 home loans, partly under the government decree that forces banks to do so in the case of families in difficulty due to an increase in interest rates.
According to an investigation conducted by Lusa, under statements made at a press conference or in a written response, banks carried out 31,350 restructuring of home loans.
Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) was the one that restructured the most loans, with the president of the public bank, Paulo Macedo, specifying at the press conference for the presentation of the results for the first quarter of this year that some 8,900 restructurings had been carried out , of which 900 under the relevant decree law.
In turn, BCP’s executive chairman, Miguel Maya, noted that the bank had restructured 6,500 loans, 650 of which were within the scope of government regulations.
In a written reply to Lusa, Santander Totta said it had conducted 7,900 renegotiations in the first quarter alone.
Through the same channel, Novo Banco said it had restructured 6,150 home loans in the first quarter of this year, calling for the creation of “follow-up mechanisms and appropriate solutions” following the previous Eurozone crisis cycles that affected interest rates.
Finally, between January and April, BPI presented 1,900 renegotiated contracts.
During the press conference to present the first quarter results in Lisbon, the president of the bank, João Pedro Oliveira e Costa, noted that the number of requests for credit restructuring is falling. After the first four weeks after the publication of the government decree, the bank received more than 1,000 requests per week, recently less than 100 weekly requests.
More mortgages are expected to be revised in the coming months, as reference rates should continue to rise until the summer and there are still contracts with indices such as the 12-month Euribor that have not yet been revised.
According to the most recent data from the Bank of Portugal, referring to March, 41% of the amount of loans for permanent home ownership was indexed to the 12-month Euribor, while 33.7% was indexed to the six-month Euribor and 22. 9% to Euribor for three months.
Source: DN
