The decrease in the share of non-performing loans (NPL) in the banking sector of Ukraine to 35% from 36.3% in August was facilitated by the correct regulatory policy of the National Bank and less risky new loans that banks are issuing now, the founder and partner of the group of companies, Andriy Volkov, commented on the statistics of the central bank for the specified month to the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
He considers the decline in the share of problem loans in the banking system to be a natural process for several reasons. First, the NBU introduced rather strict rules for the assessment and provisioning of the loan portfolio, after which the banks began fruitful work on restructuring NPLs, collecting them or selling them to specialized companies. Secondly, the country is gradually resuming lending – both retail and corporate. However, due to the filing of the banks’ risk management and NBU requirements, it is now less risky and produces much fewer non-performing loans. Accordingly, the portfolio of banks began to grow again, which means that the share of old problem debts began to decline.
According to Volkov’s forecasts, this trend will continue, and the share of non-performing loans will continue to decrease.
At the same time, he drew attention to where these troubled debts are concentrated.
“Commercial banks, for the most part, have resolved or are successfully solving issues with non-performing loans: they have restructured more or less “live” debts or debts associated with the shareholders and the bank management, collected collateral from non-performing loans, sold or are selling loans, with the collection of which they cannot cope independently. Therefore, the main volume of bad debts was concentrated in state banks. And this is the next point of development for the Ukrainian NPL market, in which changes must take place – the system of working with problem debts of state banks will change or, more realistically, the sale of bad debts will begin, because without this, neither development nor sale of state-owned banks is possible,” the financier believes.
In addition, according to him, solving problems with problem debts in state banks is also on the agenda of international creditors and donors of Ukraine. Therefore, the government as a shareholder, the NBU as a regulator, as well as the supervisory boards of state banks are forced to pay sufficient attention to them.
The loan portfolio of Ukrainian banks in August 2021 increased by 3%, to UAH 1.124 trillion, while the volume of non-performing loans (NPL) decreased by 0.7%, to UAH 393.178 billion, according to reports on the website of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). According to the report, the share of non-performing loans in the country’s banking system in August fell to 34.99% from 36.3% in July.
The National Bank indicated that over the month the portfolio of loans in the corporate sector increased by 2.6% – to UAH 827.583 billion (the NPL volume in it decreased by 0.2% – to UAH 344.99 billion), and the portfolio of loans to individuals increased by 2.4% – to UAH 238.463 billion (NPL decreased by 3.7% – to UAH 47.738 billion).
At the same time, the volume of interbank loans increased by 3.9% – to UAH 41.1 billion (NPL by 1.3% – to UAH 450 million), and the volume of loans issued to public authorities and local governments – by 1.5 times, to UAH 16.7 billion (NPL remained at 0%).
According to the National Bank, in August the share of NPL in the portfolio of loans provided to the corporate sector decreased by 1.2 percentage points (to 41.69%), loans to the population – by 1.3 percentage points (to 20.02%), interbank loans – by 0.03 percentage points (to 1.10%), while the share of loans to state authorities remained at the level of 0%.
The central bank’s report indicates that the loan portfolio of state-owned banks (excluding PrivatBank) in August-2021 increased by 4.7% – to UAH 303.856 billion (the NPL volume in it decreased by 0.9% – to UAH 111.195 billion). PrivatBank’s loan portfolio grew by 0.9% – to UAH 250.674 million (NPL – by 0.1%, to UAH 176.9 billion).
In addition, over the month, the loan portfolio of banks with foreign capital increased by 3.5% (to UAH 372.39 billion), with private – by 2.2% (to UAH 196.257 billion). At the same time, the volume of NPL in them decreased by 2.5% (to UAH 82.956 billion) and by 1.1% (to UAH 21.592 billion), respectively.
Thus, in August 2021, the share of NPL in the loan portfolio of state-owned banks (excluding PrivatBank) decreased by 2 p.p. (to 36.59%), and in PrivatBank – by 0.6 p.p. (to 70.57%). At the same time, the share of NPL in the loan portfolio of banks with foreign capital decreased by 1.4 percentage points (to 22.28%), with private – by 0.4 percentage points (to 11%).
