Provisioning policies for non-performing loans: How to best ensure a “clean balance sheet”?

Mad-Daqqa t’Għajn 16-11-2017

In view of a regular public hearing with the Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB in ECON on 9 November 2017, some academic experts for banking supervision were asked to assess which provisioning practices best ensure from a prudential perspective that banks present “sound and clean balance sheets” that do not carry uncovered or hidden losses. Some of the points raised by the experts in their briefing papers are highlighted in the following summary.