Greece: Financial Sector Assessment Program-Technical Note on Insolvency and Creditor Rights and Workout of Distressed Debt by Credit Servicers

This note provides an overview of the insolvency and creditor rights’ regime in Greece and analyzes select relevant aspects in the context of an overall assessment of the Greek financial sector. It focuses on two key areas: (i) the issues affecting mortgage enforcement in Greece; and (ii) the reorganization options available to large corporations. Mortgage enforcement was considered particularly relevant given the very high level of non-preforming loans (NPLs) in the Greek financial system, of which residential mortgages make up a third of the NPLs now held primarily by non-bank institutions and serviced by the Greek credit servicers. Hence mortgage enforcement is critical to the process of legacy NPL resolution. Corporate restructuring options were also considered particularly relevant from a forward-looking perspective given the observed high concentration of bank lending to large corporates. This analysis has been conducted against the international insolvency standard (the “Standard”).2