Non-performing loans, however, continued to increase and reached 23% of the total stock, up 2% on the year-ago period, which raises doubts about a full-year profit. The NBFI market posted RON250 million aggregate loss in the second half of 2013, wiping out the entire profit of January-June.
Troubled loans in NBFIs’ portfolios are going up, while banks have cleaned up their portfolios over the last few months by removing such loans from their balance sheets or selling them to debt collection specialists, so their NPL ratio is now down to about 17%. Under the circumstances, the spread between the NPL ratios of the two financial subsectors increased.
Many non-bank financial institutions are consumer finance companies, operating on a lending segment that has been showing signs of a rebound in the last few months. NBFIs felt the rebound of consumer demand, Romania’s central bank says, and the loans to consumers rose by 2% accounting for one quarter of the total.
On the other hand, the volume of funding granted via financial leasing contracts, the main products NBFI’s sell, shrank. However, NBFIs increased the volume of loans granted to agricultural sector companies by 19%.
Aggregate NBFI loan stock stood at about RON22 billion in mid-year, according to central bank data.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)