EOS debt collector: How could those unable to pay instalments repay an entire loan now?

Non-performing loans are increasingly difficult to recover by specialised companies, so they are no longer willing to pay to banks more than 8% of the nominal value of receivables they purchase. “If we are talking about non-secured retail loans, worth up to 30,000-40,000 RON, fees amounted to 20-25% of the receivable. Now fees amount to a maximum of 5-8%. The main reason for this is the very low success rate. If the client was no longer able to pay their instalments, how could they now repay a full loan? And if we foreclose on them, what do we do with the home?,” says Georg Kovacs, general manager of EOS KSI, leader of the Romanian debt collection market. The company purchased 170 million euros in receivables from banks last year. Towards the end of the year banks cleaned their portfolios of non-performing loans, which they covered 100% through provisions in order to improve their financial indicators, and rushed to debt collectors.

Kovacs says, however, that for them it is not easy at all to turn the assets they purchased to account. Individuals’ repayment ability significantly worsened. “Whilst last year a person was able to pay 650 RON per month on average, now they pay 400 RON per month at the most.”