Assessing the Effectiveness of the Portuguese Borrower-based Measure in the Covid-19 context

Abstract

Based on the macroeconomic projections from Banco de Portugal and using an integrated micro-macro model developed by Gross and Población (2017), this paper makes a first attempt at gauging the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Portuguese households and banks. To this end, we examine how the borrower-based measure, which was put into place in 2018, may have been successful in lessening the negative economic effects of the pandemic on households’ debt servicing capacities and thereby on the banking system. We find that the borrower-based measure, defined as an LTV ratio cap of 90%, a shocked DSTI ratio cap of 50%, and a maturity cap for mortgage loans of 40 years, leads to (i) a reduction in households’ loss rate (LR), caused by both a decrease in households’ probability of default (PD) and loss given default (LGD), and (ii) an increase in the capital ratio of the banking system, compared with a scenario where these limits are not in place. We also find positive effects of introducing a shocked DSTI ratio cap, calculated according to the Portuguese borrower-based measure, as it further (i) decreases the risk parameters of the borrowers and (ii) increases the capital ratio of banks