BRD: We would have run out of “First Home” funds before yearend

BRD, the second-largest bank on the Romanian market, has so far granted 1,650 mortgage loans as part of the First Home scheme, with an overall value of around 75 million euros. If the original sum allocated to the bank had not been increased, the BRD could have ceased to grant state-secured loans before the end of this year, say officials of the lending institution. “We estimated that, at the current sales rate, we would have run out of the original 173 million-euro allocated sum before the end of this year,” says Lucian Cojocaru, commercial manager of the BRD-SocGen network. The guarantee fund asked at the beginning of October for sales forecasts for all banks taking part in the scheme, based on which it made the decision to reallocate funds. Cojocaru says the scheme now operates at a normal pace, after in the beginning there had been an accumulation of clients, whose applications were awaiting approval. “I don’t think there is diminished demand. There was client congestion in the beginning, but now things have returned to a normal rate. The time it takes for applications to be processed has also decreased, we receive an answer from the Fund within five days,” he specified.