On 5 September 2022, ESBG responded to the EBA consultation on the draft non-performing loans (NPL) transaction data templates, which seek to improve the functioning of secondary markets for NPLs.
The number of data fields in the proposed templates (especially those marked as “mandatory”) is significantly higher than what has historically been proven necessary to close voluntary NPL deals from a market standards perspective and it should therefore be reduced. Such a high number of data fields would in fact bring a significant costs increase for sellers and may jeopardise the development of NPL secondary markets.
In addition to the fact that most of the required information is too detailed and not relevant for the purposes of loan valuations, the data is also not always available within the banking system. This could lead to a counter-productive effect where sellers could renounce to sales they could execute due to constraining mandatory fields.
Another main impediment for this template to be useful is the issue of data consistency. The template would mainly be populated with management data and internal methodologies that can use different calculations and logics leading to incomparable information among portfolios.
Furthermore, it makes no sense to have common templates for single names or reduced portfolios of single names and massive portfolios of NPLs. Exposures to one single debtor or to a reduced number of corporates or SMEs have historically needed a different set of information, as their potential purchasers perform a deeper financial and legal analysis of the exposures rather than a statistical analysis, which is more adequate for massive portfolios.
Overall, the remaining fields compared to the original templates from 2017 still contain significantly more information than market standards require. For a well-functioning secondary market it is currently possible to sell NPLs by providing mainly 20 data fields.
Against this background, we request that the EBA further streamlines the templates, aiming at simpler, more balanced and effective design in order to achieve a broader application and increase transparency in the NPL market, without having a detrimental impact on EU NPL deals.
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