From next month the banks of the Eurozone could be re-entitled to distribute dividends. The appointment is for the 23 July: in that date the European Central Bank will decide whether to remove coupon and buyback restrictions launched last year to deal with the consequences of the pandemic. This was announced by Andrea Enria, president of the ECB's Banking Supervisory Board, during a virtual AFME-Omfif conversation on financial integration.
Meanwhile, positive news is arriving from Italy on the front of bank bad debts, returned to its lowest level in 12 years (June 2009). According to the latest monthly report by the ABI, in April the figure net of write-downs and provisions already made was equal to 19,8 billion euros, a value that compares with the 19,9 billion of last March, the 26,1 billion of April 2020 (-24%) and the 32,6 billion of April 2019 (-39,2%).
Also in April, the ratio of net non-performing loans to loans stood at 1,15%, the same percentage as last March, while the ratio was 1,50% in April 2020. The improvement is even more evident in comparison with the data for April 2019 (1,87 %) and November 2015 (4,89%).
Compared to the peak reached in November 2015, at 88,8 billion, the net non-performing loans of Italian banks were felled by 77,7%.
As for prospects for the coming months, "everything will depend on the strength of the recovery - explains the deputy general manager of ABI, Gianfranco Torriero - On this data on the GDP of Bank of Italy they are a good sign. And even the signals that come from the economic indicators all seem quite positive”.
In the early stages of the pandemic, economic authorities feared that the crisis triggered by Covid would cause a surge in non-performing loans and non-performing loans similar to the one that occurred after the 2007-2009 crisis, then exacerbated by the Eurocrisis of the following years. For now, this scenario appears to be averted.
They helped to defuse the danger monetary and fiscal policies conceived "with a view to dealing with an external emergency, with measures that served to ferry businesses to a new normality - continues Torriero - There have been some sectors that have been less affected by the crisis, but there is also a set of totally different from those of 2008-2013”.
In the coming months, with the disappearance of some measures, it will be possible to verify whether the increase in the riskiness of loans will be "of a physiological and non-pathological type", concludes the deputy general manager of the ABI, recalling in any case that non-performing loans are "the last stage we arrive at: first we pass from payment delays and probable defaults”.
