BCR sold 150m euros' worth of retail loans at 9.8% of their value

BCR, the biggest bank in terms of assets, last year sold to some debt collection firms outside the group a portfolio of bad retail loans worth 624.5m RON (almost 150m euros) for which it got less than 10% of the nominal value of receivables, that is the equivalent of 14.6m euros. For the respective loans, BCR had set up provisions representing the equivalent of almost 11m euros. To clean up its balance sheet and narrow provisioning costs, the bank sold large sums of both retail and corporate loans to debt collection companies part of BCR group. As a matter of fact, a specialised firm, Suport Colect, was set up last year, in which the bank invested 1.5m RON and whose core business is monitoring, collecting and purchasing retail and corporate receivables. Thus, retail loans worth 1.13bn RON (269m euros) and corporate loans of 190m RON (45.3m euros) were moved from the bank's balance sheet into that of some affiliated firms.