On Thursday 15 March, the European Central Bank published the highly anticipated final version of its addendum to its guidelines 20 March 2017, which sets out its prudential expectations for banks concerning new non-performing loans (NPL).
Essentially, the new text expresses the expectation that from 1 April 2018 onwards, new unsecured NPL will be completely covered two years after the date on which they are classified NPL. For new secured NPL, a degree of provisioning is expected three...