June 1 (SeeNews) - Norwegian debt solutions provider B2Holding said on Tuesday that it has invested 3 million euro ($3.7 million) in the purchase of new non-performing loan (NPL) portfolios in Southeast Europe (SEE) in the first quarter of this year.
Investments in the purchase of NPL portfolios in SEE formed about 16% of all respective investments of B2Holding in the three months through March 2021, the group said in a statement.
Last year, B2Holding invested 31 million euro in the purchase of new NPL portfolios in SEE, it said. The SEE market ranked third in terms of investments of B2Holding in 2020 but it also was the only region in which investments grew on an annual comparison basis, by 27%.
In SEE, B2Holding is active in the markets of Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Cyprus.
The volume of NPLs in Bulgaria was 5.7 billion levs ($3.6 billion/2.9 billion euro) at the end of March 2021, or 7.1% of all provided loans. A year earlier, NPLs made up 8% of all loans, B2Holding said, citing data by the Bulgarian central bank. The main reason for the decline in NPLs after the challenging 2020, which was marked by the coronavirus crisis, is the loan moratorium, which benefited many bank's clients, as well as the more restrictive lending policies applied last year, B2Holding added.
B2Holding also said that it expects significant growth in the number of NPL purchases in Europe in 2021 and 2022. "With the expiration of the moratorium on loan payments and the termination of government guarantee schemes in support of businesses and households, we will see a strong increase in overdue loans. Our group expects increased market activity later this year and next year," Eric Jonsen, CEO of B2Holding, said in the statement.
The Bulgarian unit of B2Holding is Debt Collection Agency (DCA). DCA started operating in Bulgaria in 2010 and was acquired by B2Holding in 2016. It is currently active in 22 countries.
($ = 0.818269 euro)