Cojocaru, BRD: We have to get used to smaller loans

A year after the violent crisis outburst on the domestic market, loan portfolio quality is starting to stabilise, but monthly sales are half the 2008 average and there are no prospects of a significant acceleration, says Lucian Croitoru, executive manager of the Commercial Pole of BRD-SocGen network.
From his position, Cojocaru is in charge with coordinating commercial operations for individual clients, as well as for firms with annual turnovers of up to 50m euros. BRD is the second largest bank on the market, with a portfolio of 2.5 million clients and a loan volume of 28.9bn RON (6.9bn euros on June 30).
Lines of credit needed to be restructured particularly in the firms’ case, as most of them faced falling sales, thus becoming unable to pay instalments for contracted loans.
In the case of individual clients, restructuring was less extensive. Yet, BRD has to change its procedures: while loan restructuring for individual clients was operated at a centralised level until 2008, starting this year this became the network’s task.
In general, restructuring steps have yielded positive results.
After the shock of plummeting sales of spring, firms in summer started looking at plans for the future, says Cojocaru, and this is fuelling loan demand as well. Instead, in the area of financing for individuals, Cojocaru is still downbeat.
The volume of monthly loan sales stabilised as early as May at around 50% from the monthly average of 2008. “In the case of the population there’s an over-indebtedness situation. Amid the current unemployment prospects, people are more concerned about how to pay existent instalments. I do not believe volumes will rise in 2010,” says Cojocaru.
Though loan sales are considerably lower than those of past years, the volume is falling slowly at BRD, with declines standing at around 3%. BRD manager says this trend can be accounted for by the balanced structure of loans granted by the bank.
“A decent loan growth rate would stand at 10%-15%, but this might not happen in 2010”.