Nothing to do with the situation that the Spanish financial system faced at the beginning of the last financial crisis. The delinquency of the loans granted for the purchase or rehabilitation of a home fell to 2.37% at the end of 2022, its lowest final level since 2008, despite the rise in the Euribor and the upward revision of the loans granted variable rate.
Both the entity and the banks themselves have been stressing that delinquency remains in an area of historic lows despite the most rapid increase in interest rates by the European Central Bank (ECB) since the creation of the euro -the issuer placed the last week its benchmark rate at 3.5% – because the job market is holding up to date, as is the economy, which has dodged contraction after growing at 0.2% in the third and fourth quarters of last year.
Overall, non-performing loans granted by Spanish banks increased slightly in January to 3.56%, from 3.54% at the end of the last month of last year. Thus, the rate breaks with four consecutive months of declines. The data published by the Bank of Spain (BdE) confirm that the reason for this slight increase is that the credit portfolio in force at the end of the month had been reduced to 1,204 trillion euros, compared to 1,219 trillion the previous month due to the reduction of delinquent loans by 237 million to 42,922.
Compared to the same month a year ago, credit delinquency has gone from 4.32% to 3.56% and the balance of doubtful loans has decreased by almost 9,500 million. With the disaggregated data, the delinquency of banks, savings banks and cooperatives increased in January to 3.48% from 3.45% in December. This increase in arrears in deposit institutions is due to the fact that the credit portfolio was reduced to 1,153 trillion, since the balance of defaults continued to drop to 40,097 million.
As for consumer finance companies, the delinquency ratio rose to 6.02%, with a volume of doubtful loans of 2,637 million, below the 2,695 million at the end of 2022, and a credit portfolio that fell to 43,842 million of euros .
