Starting from January 1, 2021, the EU regulation number 171 of 19/10/2017, relating to the new European classification of the state of default for businesses towards credit institutions. Since the thresholds for the qualification of bad payers will be very low, the possibility of running into a bank default it could become a reality for many companies. In fact, it will be enough to find oneself with an arrears vis-à-vis a bank of more than 90 days, greater than 1% of the total exposure to the institution, to fall on the blacklist.
42 thousand small and medium-sized enterprises at risk of closure
This is a very thorny knot, above all because it will emerge in a complicated period, between the continuous health emergency and the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the newspaper Italy Today, the aforementioned EU classification on non-compliance by companies could cause the evaporation of 42 thousand small and medium-sized enterprises.
In addition to the president of Confesercenti, Patrizia De Luis, the president of ABI, Antonio Patuelli, also raised the alarm. “The rules thought before the pandemic they cannot be asserted now, as if everything were normal. It is not so much the health of the banks as of the economy in general, of the lives of all of us that are at stake“he stressed.
The upcoming rules from Brussels represent a kind of “deadly mechanism especially in the era of pandemics because those who accuse that delay end up being included in the list of bad payers, with all that follows. All this, in a period of pandemic, would end up strangling the economy“, added Patuelli himself.
What will change
From a bureaucratic point of view, current regulations currently allow labeling businesses in default in case they present arrears payments for more than 90 consecutive days on open exposures to your institution. With the new regulation it was decided to lower the threshold. This means that a material backlog is any amount greater than 500 euro, inherent to one or multiple loans and representing more than 1% of the company’s usual total exposures to the bank.
Tens of thousands of companies risk being unable to move forward for the ridiculous sum of 500 euros. Yes, because at the moment the black sticker is triggered only in the face of “significant” arrears. In the eye of the storm they will also end natural persons who have exposures of less than one million euros. Here the thresholds are even tighter: 100 euro.
The warning of the ABI rings out loud and clear: “Businesses must be aware of the new rules and punctually comply with the payment deadlines provided for in the contract, in order not to be in arrears in the repayment of their debts to banks, even for modest amounts. And this, to avoid that the bank is required to classify the company in default and initiate actions to protect its credits“.
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