Instruction of the Banco de Portugal No 13/2020 was published today, establishing what information institutions are required to report on the implementation of the credit moratoria created in response to the COVID‑19 pandemic.

This regulatory initiative is complementary to Notice of the Banco de Portugal No 2/2020, through which the Banco de Portugal imposed the obligation to disclose information to bank customers on credit moratoria on institutions and which aims to support the supervisor in monitoring the implementation of these moratoria.

Thus, institutions are required to inform the Banco de Portugal of the application of the moratorium created by Decree-Law No 10-J/2020 of 26 March 2020 (“public moratorium”) and of the voluntary moratoria provided under the Guidelines of the European Banking Authority (“private moratoria”) which they chose to apply.

The information includes requests for the application submitted by bank customers to the institutions and the credit agreements covered. For requests meeting the requirements for the moratoria to be applied, institutions must indicate the support measure adopted. Institutions are also required to report situations where such requirements were not met.

Based on the information reported by institutions, the Banco de Portugal will regularly disclose data on the Bank Customer Website on the evolution of the requests for the application of credit moratoria.

Meanwhile, the Banco de Portugal has collected data from the institutions on the support measures applied since the entry into force of the public moratorium and the provision of private moratoria. Information already available indicates that, by the end of April, requests for the application of credit moratoria covered a total of 568,912 credit agreements. Until that date, institutions had applied the support measures provided for in the moratoria to 514,750 credit agreements, with the remaining 54,162 corresponding to situations which, on that date, were still under review or did not meet the conditions set for the moratoria to be applied.

About two-thirds of the credit agreements benefiting from support measures are covered by the public moratorium regime (345,551 contracts), while the remainder are covered by private moratoria (169,199).

In the context of the public moratorium, almost half of the credit agreements covered (162,492) concern credit granted to consumers for the purchase of permanent residential property, while the remainder involve credit to enterprises, sole proprietors and other customers.

Credit agreements covered by private moratoria mainly concern consumer credit (90,549) and the remainder concern mortgage credit (78,650).

Credit agreements for consumers (consumer credit, home loans and other mortgage credit) account for more than half of the contracts benefiting from the moratoria (331,691 contracts, corresponding to 64% of the total contracts covered by the moratoria).