The families of the North West make the banks "suffer" more than those of the rest of Italy. This is confirmed by the new data from the Bank of Italy. At the end of the third quarter of last year, in fact, the lenders of Piedmont, Liguria e Valle d'Aosta they reported having "non-performing" loans granted to consumer families for a total value of 1,721 billion euros, equal to 12,66% of the total "non-performing" loans of the three regions, amounting to 13,594 billion.
At the national level, however, the share of "non-performing" consumer households, as at 30 September 2017, was equal to 11,2% of the 170,9 billion making up the sum of credits "whose total collection is not certain because the subjects debtors are in a state of insolvency or in substantially comparable situations" (translation of "non-performing").
Compared to the national average, the rate of bad loans attributed to consumer households in the North West is about one and a half points higher. Most of the non-performing loans generated by families in the North West are related to mortgages for the purchase of homes (1,128 billion between Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta, 394 million in Liguria), while consumer credit accounted for 153 million in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta and 46 million in Liguria.
Much more than consumer households, however, it is non-financial companies and businesses that make the banks "suffer": with regard to this category of debtors, as of 30 September last, the institutions active in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta had credits considered totally or partially uncollectible, amounting to just over 7 billion in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta and 2,2 billion in Liguria (about 35,5 billion in the entire country).
Returning to the debts of non-performing consumer households, the Bank of Italy also found that the sum of "probable defaults" at the end of September 2017 was 505 million in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta and exactly 200 million in Liguria. Furthermore, the Supervisory Authority reported that at the time the overdue and unrepaid loans by consumer families in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta amounted to 106 million and those of families living in Liguria amounted to 33 million.
The credit "non-performing" should not be identified with a simple customer late payment, because the late payment is not a sufficient condition for reporting it as "non-performing" to the Central Credit Register. The classification of a loan among non-performing loans is given by the financial intermediary (mainly the bank), after a specific assessment of the customer's financial situation which leads to the consideration that the debtor is in a state of insolvency.
