Banks slash their stock of bad loans
Greek banks achieved a remarkable reduction in their nonperforming exposures in the first nine months of the year, despite the tough conditions of Covid-19, showing their resilience before moves for the substantial streamlining of their financial balances scheduled up to the first half of 2021.
According to January-September data compiled by Kathimerini, the country’s four systemic banks achieved a reduction of NPEs by 13.7 billion euros at group level year-on-year, with €12.9 billion of that concerning NPEs in Greece.
The bad exposure at group level dropped from €73.57 billion in end-September 2019 to €60 billion in end-September 2020, a reduction of 18.5%. The same rate was recorded in Greece where bad loans in banks’ portfolios shrank from €68.7 billion last year to €55.8 billion in 2020.
The bank with the biggest reduction has been Eurobank, which contained its NPE stock by 56.1% to €6.1 billion on group level. National slashed its stock by 12.5% to €10.1 billion, Piraeus shaved 11.7% of its bad-loan stock to take it to €22.7 billion, and Alpha reduced it by 5.8% to €21 billion, to drop further by year-end with the sale of the Galaxy package.
