"First Home" 4 reaches one billion-euro cap

Four top-ranking banks - BCR, BRD, Banca Transilvania and Bancpost - have so far announced they will participate in the "First Home" 4 scheme, with an overall cap of one billion euros, compared with 1.5 billion euros that could have been allocated if all players had accepted the Government proposal.

The ordinance that regulates the fourth edition of the scheme was published in the Official Gazette at the beginning of this week, with the enforcement guidelines set to be published within 15 days. After the publishing of the guidelines, the only thing needed will be for the banks to make the necessary adjustment to their internal systems.

For now, however, there are still players who have yet to spend the entire cap for the third edition of the "First Home" scheme, for which a 200 million-euro cap had been allocated. Only BCR, Raiffeisen and CEC Bank formally announced their allocated cap had run out.

BCR, which had the biggest guarantee cap for "First Home" loans has so far granted state-secured loans of over 550 million euros, i.e. more than a third of the total.
BRD, the second-largest bank on the Romanian market by assets, plans to sell around 340 million euros' worth of loans through "First Home" 4.
Banca Transilvania wants to grant 48 million euros' worth of loans through the fourth edition of "First Home", i.e. the same amount as in preceding editions.