The twelve Spanish banks supervised by the European Central Bank (ECB) remained in the fourth quarter of 2020 practically in the last place of the entire Eurozone in terms of cost effectiveness already ratio de capital CET1, according to the data published by the entity this Monday.
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The low profitability of banks in the euro zone represents a key problem for the stability of the sector, as highlighted by the ECB on several occasions, that it has been encouraging national entities and authorities to undertake processes of consolidation at the domestic and cross-border level.
The main Spanish banks supervised directly by the ECB offered a return on equity (RoE) of -4,15% between October and December. This figure differs from the -3.60% of the three previous months and is below the average of the 1.53% of the euro area, which in the third quarter had raised a RoE of 2.12%.
Only the greek banks, with -6.81%, they have registered a worse profitability data than the Spanish.
The Lithuanian banks they remained the most profitable in the euro, with a return on equity of 10.60%, almost ten points above the Eurozone average. In second position were the Estonian banks, with a RoE of 6.75%.
In the case of the other large euro countries, the most comparable to Spain, the return of german banks between October and December it was 0,57%, while that of french and italian, stood at the 4,23% and in the 0,26%, respectively.
WORST FIGURES IN THE CET1 CAPITAL RATIO
Spanish banks have also ranked last in the euro zone in terms of ratio de capital CET1, by standing at an average of 12,91%, slightly above the 12.54% in the third quarter, but still below the average of 15.62% of the euro area as a whole.
Spanish banks under the direct supervision of the ECB are the only ones that fell below this average, along with those of Portugal (14,05%), Austria (14,33%), Greece (15,12%) e Italy (15,50%).
Again, the Estonian banks, with 29.14%, had the highest CET1 ratio of the Nineteen, ahead of the banks of Lithuania (21.21%) and those of Belgium (19,34%).
BEST NAKED LOAN RATIO SINCE 2015
Regarding the NPL ratio (NPL), the whole of the Eurozone stood at the end of 2020 in the 2,63%, equivalent to 443,540 million euros, down from 2.82% in the third quarter of last year. In the case of Spanish banks, recorded an NPL ratio at the end of 2020 of 2,93%, slightly below the 2.99% recorded in the three previous months.
Among the euro countries, the lowest NPL ratio corresponded to Luxembourg (0.78%), followed by Estonia Y Germany, with 1.19% and 1.20%, respectively. At the opposite extreme, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal recorded a NPL ratio of 25.54%, 10.21% and 5.48%, respectively.
Despite the crisis, banks have continued to reduce their NPL ratio and it is already the better reading of the data since the ECB began publishing its supervisory statistics in 2015.
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