The new norms setting the minimal consumer lending conditions issued by the National Bank of Romania last fall and enforcing today seem to have made little difference to those actually planning to take out a loan from a bank.
The temporary reduction in the pressure on lending can be rather pinned to the decrease in the liquidity supplies of those seeking a loan, a cyclic phenomenon after all.
Compared to the frenzy last December when people were almost certain the new minimal requirements due to enforce on February 1, 2004 would lead to huge queues in fronts of the banks until the very last minute just to grab a loan under the old terms, things seem completely different now.
As the banks’ officials say, no increase in the demand for loans and no special last minute interest have been seen lately. At best, the volume of loans granted in January was equal to that in the previous years. Why is that?
The lack of pressure on lending might, on the one hand, come from the cyclic cash reduction in the first few months of the year, but also from the fact that the new requirements may be just minimal and people expect to see no big changes in the offers of the banks. “I’ve also heard something like: if I really need something, then I’ll do everything I can to meet the requirements,” a credit officer of a bank highly exposed to the consumer credit market was saying yesterday.
The new minimal mandatory requirements introduced by the central bank largely stipulate that, in case of a consumer loan used to buy goods, the lender may request a guarantor as an alternative to the 25% down payment. What is new about the credits for personal needs, which fall into the consumer credit category is that the lender may now accept real guarantees to fully cover the loan applied for. The requirement to have the instalment plus interest account for up to 30% of the net income of the borrower was kept. The real estate and mortgage loans shall be granted only if the down payment is worth at least 25% of the value of the home bought with borrowed money.
Moreover, when assessing the creditworthiness of a housing loan applicant, a requirement to be considered is that the instalments, that is the principal and the interest, shall not account for more than 35% of the net income of the applicant and his/her family. The bank will calculate the net income of the applicant by subtracting the commitments from the total income.
oana.nuta@zf.ro