From this Wednesday, the 10th, Banco de Portugal will monitor the sale of non-performing loans by banks to non-financial companies and will be able to impose fines in case of non-compliance with the rules.
The Legal Regime for the Assignment and Management of Bank Credits – which transposed into Portuguese legislation a European directive that should have been put into practice almost two years ago – comes into force today and regulates the conditions for the assignment (sale) of credit portfolios (in general, non-performing credit) to non-financial entities.
The regime stipulates the rules that banks that sell credits and companies that buy them (in general, investment funds) must comply with and defines the Bank of Portugal as the authority responsible for supervising and monitoring the activities carried out both by companies that buy credits and by the managers of those credits.
Until now, Banco de Portugal did not have supervisory or sanctioning powers when selling a loan to a company outside its supervisory perimeter.
It now has the power to carry out inspections, receive and evaluate customer complaints and open administrative offense proceedings and even issue fines if there are non-compliances.
Banco de Portugal also regularly receives data on credit sold to other companies. Until now, the total amounts sold by banks were not disclosed by the banking regulator and supervisor.
These credits will also be reported to the Credit Responsibilities Center (until now, a credit sold was no longer included in that database).
In recent years, especially since 2017, large credit portfolios have been sold by banks (mainly mortgage loans) with the aim of improving their balance sheets.
Several customers complained that banks sold their loans without allowing them to exercise the so-called “right of resumption” of the contract (pay off outstanding debt, pay interest and return to payment of installments).
As a result, customers were prevented from resuming the credit, because, from the moment of assignment (sale), the loan was no longer covered by the legal regime that regulates housing loans and, consequently, customers were no longer able to exercise the repossession provided for by law, leaving them in a situation of greater lack of protection and at risk of losing their homes.
In two similar rulings, one from October 2024 and the other from May 2025, the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) annulled the sale of two credit assignments as it saw “fraud of the law” in the operations carried out by Santander Totta and BPI, as they excluded customers from that legal protection.
Lusa asked the BdP to which credits the new rules that come into force today apply, with an official source explaining that they apply to credits sold from today onwards (‘original assignments’).
There are also rules that apply to credits that have already been sold and are resold by the entities that initially purchased them (‘subsequent assignments’) but only with regard to the duties to be observed by credit managers.