L’ampleur des mauvaises créances détenues par les banques européennes continue d’être inquiétante, « a major concern », elles sont plus du double de celles détenues par les banques américaines déclare le régulateur bancaire européen, l’EBA.
Les NPL, c’est à dire les dettes dont le service n’est pas assuré,  représentaient 5,6% du total à fin Juin contre 6,1% en début 2015. ceci se compare à un pourcentage de 3% aux USA. Le total de ces NPL est de plus de 1 trillion d’euros c’est 7,3% du GDP de l’Europe.

On classe en NPL les dettes dont le service est en retard de plus de 90 jours.
Près de 17% des prêts en Italie sont classés en NPL !
EN PRIME
« Although gradually improving, quality of assets remains a major concern in the EU and an impediment to new lending and banks’ profitability, particularly in countries already under economic stress, » the EBA said.
Banks in Sweden had the lowest level of NPLs at an average of 1.1 percent, followed by Norway (1.4 percent), Finland (1.7 percent), Britain (2.9 percent), the Netherlands (2.9 percent) and Germany (3.4 percent).
The regulator said the scale of bad loans needed to be tackled because banks typically lend more when their bad loans are lower and their capital is higher, so reducing NPLs should increase lending to companies and help Europe’s recovery.
The findings were part of a ‘transparency exercise’ conducted by the EBA this year, instead of a more intensive ‘stress test’ of lenders, aimed at shining a light on areas of weakness.
Analysts are expected to use the data to conduct their own number-crunching on banks to spot potential vulnerabilities or what EBA calls imposing « market discipline » on lenders.
The regulator said European banks have shown improvement in almost all other areas in recent years, including capital, leverage ratios and profitability.
TURNING A CORNER?
There are signs the banking sector is turning a corner as policymakers fret at how valuations of lenders in Europe lag those of their U.S. rivals, which are stealing market share.
Profitability, as measured by return on regulatory capital, improved to an average 9.1 percent at the end of June from zero at the end of 2013. But that is still below the more than 10 percent banks believe is needed to cover the cost of capital on a sustainable basis.
Some countries lag badly, with the return on capital in Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, at just 6.2 percent.
In other signs of improvement, the average core equity ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets rose to 12.8 percent, from 9.7 percent at the end of 2011. The ratio dips to 11.8 percent when applying all the new capital requirement rules.
This is well above mandatory minimums for even the biggest banks.
Much of the increase is due to fresh capital rather than cuts in lending, with total capital up by 232 billion euros since 2011, equivalent to the GDP of Finland or Denmark.
The aggregate leverage ratio, a measure of capital to all assets on a non-risk weighted basis, was 4.9 percent, well above the current minimum of 3 percent that will be binding from 2018.
Global regulators are reviewing the minimum leverage ratio, with banks betting on 4 percent or higher in Britain, the United States and Switzerland.