WARSAW: Poland’s banks tightened up their mid-March offer to ease CHF-mortgage problems, saying they would put PLN 125 million into a joint fund to help payments on stressed loans while restricting an installment stability mechanism to below average earners only after a major CHF move, a joint declaration signed by ten banks Wednesday shows.
Banks will also extend a series of temporary measures to end-year at what the ZBP banker lobby would be a total 2015 cost of over PLN 300 million. Those measures included such steps as acknowledging negative CHF LIBOR rates, trimming FX spreads short-term and other standard practices.
Of the two funds that ZBP have proposed for helping borrowers and stabilizing payments, the ZBP largely tightened up terms vis-a-vis the original offer. A fund for mortgage loan restructuring, addressed to clients (PLN and FX-denominated alike) who suffer an illness, job loss, or suffer from a natural disaster, would be fueled with PLN 125 million by sector banks, the new document shows.
Stability funds, created individually at each bank and designed to protect buyers from further massive CHF appreciation, would be triggered only above CHF/PLN 5. Potential beneficiaries have to sign on within six months and agree to terms of a potential conversion of principal to zloty. The stability funds are designed to cover 12 months of installments up to PLN 1500, which the borrower will have to repay.