The bad debts of Italian banks are dropped by almost 76 billion euros in the last two years, as part of a process that is gradually bringing the sector back to profitability, also thanks to the decrease in provisions. The mass of non-performing loans, according to a report by Fabi, the Autonomous Italian Banking Federation, is decreased from 360 billion (2015) to 284 billion (2017) and further reductions are already envisaged by all the industrial plans presented by the banks, which indicate, for the period 2018-2020, a drop in non-performing loans (npl) of over 38%.
It follows that – according to Fabi – a new tightening regulation by the European Union would hurt the banks of Southern Europe and the Italian ones in particular: this is because, according to Fabi, the current levels of NPLs in the country's banking sector are more than double the demands they would like to impose. Even this consideration, which sounds almost like an alarm, emerges from the report of the main banking union, released just before the European Council scheduled for tomorrow which will discuss, among other things, in the context of the negotiations on the banking union, the proposal, advanced by Germany and France, of a regulatory override on the clean-up of balance sheets of credit companies. The issue will already be at the center of the meeting of the ECB Supervisory Board today, Tuesday, pending the discussion in Brussels which evidently it will not only focus on the issue of migrants.
While in fact in the portfolios of the European giants, much less observed by the regulators - the Fabi report insists - the weight of high-risk financial assets is very strong: out of the total bank assets, derivatives account for 17% in England, 16% in France and Germany against 9% in Italy. "Imposing sales under pressure of non-performing loans favors the speculators' market, damaging the banking companies and their workers who have already contributed to the recovery of the sector", comments the general secretary of Fabi, Lando Maria Sileoni, according to whom "the ECB and the regulators The EU should worry not only about the credit risk represented by NPLs, stopping the counterproductive and obsessive cleaning of balance sheets, but also about the threats inherent in the banks of Northern Europe".
The Franco-German proposal, in detail, is aimed at reduce gross and net non-performing loans to 5% and 2,5% of total loans, respectively. But Fabi in his report insists on maintaining that "a new strict regulation dictated by theobsession with solidity at any cost, even in a context of economic recovery and a strong and physiological decrease in the stock of non-performing loans and new inflows, has a dangerous anti-cyclical flavour. Right now that the Italian banking system has found its way back to profitability thanks to the drastic drop in new provisions and the sharp decline in the stock of non-performing loans”. The data clarify the picture: from 2015, the peak of the growth of non-performing loans, to 2017 the gross non-performing loans in the balance sheets of Italian banks fell by a good 76 billion with a drop of 21% on the 360 billion of 2015; at the end of 2017 the ratio between gross non-performing loans and loans stood at 14% compared to 18% two years earlier.
