High-income customers can now get bank loans twice as high under new eased lending conditions, a result of the NBR's approval of banks' lending norms.
However, clients with low incomes may find it more difficult to get a loan under the new norms, than it was under the old conditions.
In order to establish the customers' capacity for indebtedness, the NBR asked banks to calculate a basic goods basket, which has to be deducted from the clients' incomes.
Alpha Bank was the first bank to be granted approval to use its own lending conditions by the central bank.
The Greek bank is allowed to accept an indebtedness level as high as 55%, up from the previous 44%, and as much as 65% for customers with net monthly incomes (per family) of more than 1,500 euros.
At the same time, the advance payment for mortgage loans was set at 15%, however the bank is allowed to go as low as 0% under certain conditions.
To calculate available incomes, the bank deducts a basket of 735 RON per month for a family of three, as agreed with the NBR.
For clients that earn the average wage in the economy, of around 1,000 RON (305 euros) per month, the new norms do not bring about any significant changes.
For a family of three, in which the parents earn incomes that equal the average salary in the economy and have a child to raise, the enforcement of the new rules can lead to a lower capacity of indebtedness.
For example, such a client would be able to contract a mortgage loan with a monthly instalment of 695 RON, from a previous level of 700 RON.
The lower the clients' monthly salary, the wider the difference. However, the client in this example could be granted a larger personal loan, under the former conditions the instalment would have only stood at 600 RON.
Customers had to wait for more than four months for the "eased up loans" to be approved, with authorisation from the NBR being delayed. Initially, the NBR had announced its intention to give up the compulsory advance payments for mortgage loans as early as in December.
In early March, the NBR also announced it would drop the limit for the indebtedness level (30% for consumer loans, 35% for mortgage loans and 40% overall), but asked banks to devise their own norms, which would then be sent to the NBR for approval.
At present, around 15 banks have sent their conditions to the NBR for approval.
Most banks have taken into account the elimination of advance payments and higher indebtedness levels.
The authorisation process was delayed much longer than expected, as the NBR was dissatisfied with the banks' applications for many reasons.
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