The new consumer loans granted by financial institutions operating in the country between November and December of last year required an additional effort of 1.1 trillion pesos, since as part of the measures adopted to moderate the rapid growth that said wallet, the Financial Supervision, Through Circular 026, it forced these establishments to make greater provisions on these new consumer loans that they granted as of November 202.
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In addition to those 1.1 trillion pesos constituted by order of the Financial Superintendency, the credit institutions had to provision another 969,000 million, with which the total amount that the banks had to ‘freeze’ to support these new loans, in case of that the resources cannot be recovered, amounted to an additional 2.03 trillion, which represents 11.4 percent of the total provisions for consumption alone.
This was made known by Jorge Castaño Gutiérrez, Financial Superintendent, during his speech this Thursday at the 25th Treasury Congress organized by the Banking Association of Colombia (Asobancaria), which takes place in Cartagena.
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The measures for the banks to close the credit faucet a bit, given the overflowing growth of inflation and in view of a lower economy in 2023, had been announced by the financial system surveillance entity, precisely at the last Convention Banking, but they came into effect at the beginning of November of last year.
In this sense, Castaño Gutiérrez gave some peace of mind, since he said that today the consumer portfolio is growing at a slower rate than it was last year. «The lower growth of the total portfolio is explained by the consumer portfolio,» said the official.
The entity’s data indicates that the consumer portfolio alone, which grew in June of last year at a rate of more than 12 percent real per year, was already growing at a real 4.56 percent in December.
This lower dynamics in consumer loans is due, in turn, to the lower rate observed in payroll and free investment loans, which went from growing close to 4 percent to -3.85 percent between June and December 2022 , in the case of payroll, and from 28 to 13.05 percent in free investment.
«Disbursements are less than half of those registered at the beginning of 2022,» said the official, who added that free investment and credit card products show acceleration in default, most of it explained by macroeconomic factors and not by issues idiosyncratic aspects of placement policies.
They also highlighted that although the delinquency of the consumer loans has warned, the coverage of the entities on these loans is maintained by the strengthening of the provisions as a result of Circular 026.
In this sense, he specified that by including the effect of the additional provisions for internal policy and in application of said measure, the coverage indicator in that portfolio went from 137.49 percent in November to 146.53 percent in December 2022. , means that for every 100 pesos lent by consumer entities, there are 146.53 pesos saved to support those resources in case they cannot be recovered.
