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The ECB supports all initiatives aimed at providing sustainable solutions to temporarily distressed debtors in the context of the current outbreak. To this end, the ECB has introduced supervisory flexibility regarding the treatment of non-performing loans (NPLs), in particular to allow banks to fully benefit from guarantees and moratoriums put in place by public authorities to tackle the current distress.
First, within their remit and on a temporary basis supervisors, will exercise flexibility regarding the classification of debtors as “unlikely to pay” when banks call on public guarantees granted in the context of coronavirus. The supervisor will also exercise certain flexibilities regarding loans under Covid-19 related public moratoriums. Second, loans which become non-performing and are under public guarantees will benefit from preferential prudential treatment in terms of supervisory expectations about loss provisioning. Lastly, supervisors will deploy full flexibility when discussing with banks the implementation of NPL reduction strategies, taking into account the extraordinary nature of current market conditions.
In addition, excessive volatility of loan loss provisioning should be tackled at this juncture to avoid excessive procyclicality of regulatory capital and published financial statements. Within its prudential remit, the ECB recommends that all banks avoid procyclical assumptions in their models to determine provisions and that those banks that have not done this so far opt for the IFRS 9 transitional rules.
These measures to mitigate credit risk come in addition to the capital and operational relief measures announced on March 12, 2020.