Banks asked for information about 878,000 potential clients, an 11% increase against the similar months of last year, according to Credit Bureau data. The figures virtually point to the size of demand for new loans.
The rest of 1 million reports were requested by banks to monitor the financial situation of current debtors, a category that bankers are more strictly watching amid rising problems with bad debts.
“The increase of 2014 is largely due to the significant portfolio monitoring by participants and to a lesser extent to loan demand. On the other hand, portfolio monitoring has the potential to generate lending growth,” states Serban Epure, general manager of the Credit Bureau.
The number of monitoring reports leapt in February, when 912,000 reports were released (compared with 121,000 in January).
The volume of information requests on potential clients was also significant, with 471,000 reports issued in February, 9% above the monthly average of 2013. In 2013, a total number of 5.2 million reports of this type were released, namely a monthly average of 433,000 requests from banks.
“It’s worth noticing that the highest number of loan reports (8.3 million) in the history of the Credit Bureau was released in 2013, pointing to the increasing usefulness of the information we manage,” says Epure.
The Credit Bureau collects data only on loans granted to individuals, having 33 banks and 21 non-banking financial institutions in its system.
According to Credit Bureau data, a total number of 5.6 million consumer loans, mortgages and credit cards was registered at the end of February.
The number of consumer loans slightly dropped below 3 million accounts in February, while due sums on this segment amounted to 54.4 billion lei (around EUR12 billion).
Consumer lending was the hardest hit during the crisis. Retail lending has been kept afloat only by the solid sales of loans taken out for the acquisition of a house. The number of mortgages has risen from 160,000 to 272,000 accounts from December 2008 until now.
Credit cards have returned to growth in the past three months, after a mixed evolution last year, with their number reverting toward 2.4 million.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)