Sareb Sold Loans Worth €186M Online in 2017

11 January 2018 – Expansión

Sareb sold loans with a nominal value of €186 million through its online channel in 2017, according to a statement issued by the entity.

Last summer, the so-called bad bank, launched an initiative to sell non-performing loans through its website, whilst three of the servicers (Haya, Altamira and Solvia) implemented a similar plan through their respective “shop windows”.

By the end of 2017, Sareb had closed agreements to sell loans amounting to €35 million through its own online channel, plus €151 million in loans that the company sold through specialist managers.

In a pilot phase in July 2017, Sareb published a preliminary batch of non-performing loans on its website for an aggregated amount of €400 million and invited 30 professional investors to participate. It received non-binding offers for all of the loans up for sale and, in the end, 70% were converted into binding offers.

Now that the channel has been tested, Sareb has published a new batch of loans amounting to €550 million, with an average value of €13 million. The company hopes to receive non-binding offers from investors already registered on the platform during January.

During 2018, Sareb is expected to launch five more sales processes through the platform, of at least €500 million each, aimed at investors and professionals in the sector, as reported last summer.

In term of Altamira, Haya and Solvia’s shop window activities, almost 95% of the loans sold are backed by finished homes or land located in Cataluña, Andalucía, Madrid, the Community of Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The other loans are secured by offices in Madrid and hotel establishments in Gerona.

As at June 2017, the Spanish financial system accumulated non-performing loans amounting to €127.31 billion, equivalent to 16% of the total figure for the Eurozone, which amounted to €794.1 billion, according to data from the European Central Bank (ECB).

For the President of Sareb, Jaime Echegoyen (pictured above), the company has “the obligation” to innovate and contribute to boosting these types of transactions through the creation of new channels “accessing new kinds of investors and giving these assets more transparency”.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake