EBA Seeks Views on Revisions to Nonperforming Loan Data Templates

With this consultation, EBA opens a discussion with market participants on a number of aspects of the templates such as the design, data fields to be included, and their criticality and availability. The discussion paper proposes a number of changes to the existing templates, such as restructuring of the data categories, design of asset classes, reduction of data fields, and categorization of these data fields as critical and non‐critical, and presents proportionality considerations. The revised templates, as presented in this discussion paper, reduce the number of data fields to 230 from 462 in the existing version of the templates and reduce the number of critical cells from 155 to a range of 30–70 (depending on the asset class). Data fields cover the same seven asset classes of the existing version of the templates. In addition to these changes, the 17 data categories in the existing version of the templates have been reduced and restructured into the following five templates to simplify their use for market participants: 

• Counterparty template covers information on counterparty group and the counterparty.
• Relationship template merges, in a single template, any relationship, such as borrower‐loan, tenant‐lease, and guarantor‐guarantee, that the contractual agreement may imply. The template also indicates the relationship between contractual agreement and any property or non‐property collateral.
• Financial instrument template merges data on financial instrument for loan and lease contracts as well as any forbearance information applicable.
• Collateral and enforcement template covers data on any property and non‐property collateral related to contractual agreement on the financial instrument as well as any relevant information on the enforcement procedures that may apply to collateral.
• Collection and repayment template covers information on external collection and historical collection and repayment schedule related to the financial instrument. Certain data fields with respect to the payment schedule require information for the next 36 months while data fields related to historical balances require information on payment history for the past 36 months.

Annexes to the discussion paper contain templates and instructions for NPL data, present data dictionary, and explain changes with respect to the existing version of the NPL data templates. The proposed revisions to the templates are based on the user experience and feedback from various market participants and are in response to the December 2020 communication from EC on tackling NPLs in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. The revisions will enable price discovery in a consistent way across the single market. EBA will await the finalization of the draft Directive on credit servicers, credit purchasers, and the recovery of collateral. In case the final version of that Directive mandates EBA to develop implementing technical standards specifying data templates for provision of information from NPL sellers to purchasers, EBA will later issue a consultation paper on the draft standards, with the revised templates developed following this discussion paper forming the basis of this consultation paper. 

Related Links

• Press Release
• Discussion Paper (PDF)
• Revised Templates and Data Dictionary (XLSX)
• Details of Template Revisions (XLSX) 

Comment Due Date: August 31, 2021

Keywords: Europe, EU, Banking, NPL, COVID-19, Credit Risk, Reporting, Templates, Secondary Market for NPLs, EBA