In the 2022 i non-performing loans they grew up for first time in ten years. But the worst is that a further increase in NPLs (Non Performing loans) is expected also for the current year, before arriving at one downturn in 2024. Hence the ABI request to the government of imagine new measures in support of corporate debt restructuring.
Last year the deterioration rate of Italian companies increased by touching a percentage of 2,3% (against 2% in 2021) and during this year that level will increase to reach a threshold of the 3,8 percent. This is a reversal after a steady decline that had lasted since 2012.
The trend is photographed bythe Abi-Cerved Outlook 2022-24, a report that Abi and Cerved periodically produce on the estimates of the flows of new non-performing loans of companies (data which, in addition to non-performing loans, also include loans that banks must classify as unlikely to pay or past due loans). According to the analysis, the deterioration in credit quality suffers from the weakening of the question which is associated with a conspicuous inflationary push raw materials and expensive energy. Furthermore, the constant raising of the interest rates by the ECB has increased the cost of debt for companies, which due to the unstable framework they can't plan shares correctly and no longer benefit from the credit support measures adopted during the pandemic, now only partially replaced.
Since last summer the deterioration has begun
The Outlook explains that in the second half of the year there was an acceleration in credit deterioration, with an estimated average value of around 2,52%, therefore an increase compared to the values released by the Bank of Italy at the end of June. "TO June 2022 the number of non-performing contracts for non-financial companies grows by 0,5% on an annual basis (+0,14% on the quarter)” says the study. “The amount of non-performing loans also marks a slight increase (+0,25% on an annual basis). The consolidated data for 2021 mark the first year-on-year increase in the amount of new defaulted loans originating from loans to businesses since 2013 (2021 shows a +12% compared to 2020). The trend continues in 2022; the latest data for June 2022 show a number of defaulted loans already higher than the total for 2021 (15,8 thousand against 14,3 thousand), and a value of defaulted loans of 10,5 billion, already almost equal to the value observed at end of the year in 2021 (10,8 billion)”.
Still tensions in 2023, before improving in 2024
As regards the 2023 “it is expected a increase in the deterioration rate of business credit al 3,8%, a level that it hasn't been reached since 2017. The data is then expected downhill in 2024, at 3,4 percent. However, despite the expected growth in the two-year period 2023/24, the credit deterioration rate remains far away from the worrying peaks recorded during the sovereign crisis (7,5% in 2012)".
Abi's requests to the government
“The expected slowdown in the cycle, geo-political tensions and the rise in interest rates will lead to a growth in credit risk starting this year which, although fully manageable by banks, interrupts the long process of descent that began in 2012” underlined the director general of Abi John Sabatini, commenting on the report. “The reversal of the trend is a signal that confirms lneed for interventions aimed at facilitating the restructuring of loans and, in general, of measures to protect the sustainability of corporate debt, which has increased as a result of the pandemic", he concluded.
