Restructuring of mortgage loans covers more than 30,000 contracts

The five largest banks operating in Portugal have restructured more than 30,000 housing loans, including under the Government decree-law that forces banks to do so in the case of families in difficulty due to interest rate rises.

According to a survey carried out by Lusa, between communications made at press conferences or in written reply, banks have carried out 31,350 restructurings of housing loans.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) was the bank that restructured the most loans, with the chairman of the state-owned bank, Paulo Macedo, stating at the press conference to present results for the first quarter of this year that around 8,900 restructurings had been carried out, 900 of which under the decree-law in question.

In turn, the chief executive of BCP, Miguel Maya, noted that the bank had restructured 6,500 loans, 650 of which within the scope of the Government's rule.

In a written reply sent to Lusa, Santander Totta said it had carried out 7,900 renegotiations in the first quarter alone.

Using the same channel, Novo Banco said it had restructured 6,150 mortgage loans in the first quarter of this year, citing the creation of "monitoring mechanisms and appropriate solutions" after previous cycles of crisis in the euro zone that impacted interest rates.

Finally, BPI presented, between January and April, 1,900 renegotiated contracts.

At the press conference for the presentation of the first quarter results, in Lisbon, the bank's Chairman, João Pedro Oliveira e Costa, pointed out that the number of loan restructuring requests has been falling. After in the first four weeks after the publication of the Government decree-law the bank received more than 1,000 requests per week, recently these requests have been below 100 weekly requests.

The expectation is that more mortgage loans will be reviewed in the coming months, as reference rates are expected to continue to rise until the summer and there are contracts with indexing factors such as the 12-month Euribor that have not yet been reviewed.

According to the most recent data from the Bank of Portugal, which refers to March, 41% of the amount of loans for permanent home ownership were indexed to the 12-month Euribor, while 33.7% were indexed to the six-month Euribor and 22.9% to the three-month Euribor.