The volume recovered was up about 30% to EUR360 million, according to the data of AMCC, the local trade receivables management association, formed by the largest debt collection companies operating in Romania.
The number of debtors banks and other companies ‘outsourced’ remained constant at 2.3 million to 2.4 million in each half of 2015.
Banks sold a high number of non-performing loan sets in 2015, and four major debt collection companies bought EUR2 billion worth of NPLs last year alone.
NPLs sold by banks make up 35% of the debt referred, while receivables not collected by telecom companies (21%), non-bank financial institutions (9%) and insurance companies (9%) account for the rest.
Companies in this industry say banks will continue the cleanup process in 2016 and sell even more NPL sets. In other words, they expect the business to grow.
“We expect banks will continue to offer NPL portfolios for sale and thus [debt collection] service oriented companies need to re-balance their client portfolio mix,” said Georg Kovacs, AMCC chairman.
The revenues of the companies in the debt collection business should increase by 5% to 7% this year after having reached about EUR40 million in 2015.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)