The Financial Superintendency announced the latest adjustments to the measures with which it seeks that banks lend fewer resources for consumption and, thus, try to cool down the economy and reduce inflation from the current 12.2%.
(Credits in the country grow and are in line with the impulse of demand).
According to EL TIEMPO, the new measures will raise the cost of entities that want to maintain the pace of loans and disbursements for consumption, which is the portfolio that is growing the most at the moment.
In fact, as of September 2022, said portfolio, which includes free investment loans, drafts, vehicles, revolving loans and credit cards, grew at a real annual 9.7%, almost five percentage points above what than did the total credit (5%).
(Learn about the panorama of credit entities in Colombia).
At the 56th Banking Convention, which was held in Cartagena, the Government warned bankers that if they wanted to continue lending, especially through Credit cards, they would have to bear a higher cost for it.
The ‘squeeze’ of the Superfinanciera to try to reduce the dynamics of consumer loans has to do with the calculation of the expected losses due to the deterioration of the portfolio going forward, even taking into account that 2023 will be a complicated year in economic terms for the country and households.
(Batteries! Step by step to make your pending tax payments).
The level of indebtedness of these households is one of the biggest concerns since their financial burden went from 24% in June 2020 to 26% in June 2021. “45.07 percent of debtors had to allocate at least 30 percent of their disposable income to attend to their obligations with the financial system,” the entity said.
For this reason, an alternative is for credit institutions, taking advantage of the fact that 2022 has been a good year, provision for these possible losses in advance, without this affecting new originations in segments such as companies, MSMEs, agriculture and exporters.
With this, it is expected slowdown of the portfolio and less pressure on the funding rates of the entitieswhile the structure of banks’ assets and liabilities adjusts to the new economic cycle in which market liquidity will be more limited.
BRIEFCASE
*With information from EL TIEMPO
