The supervisory authority continued to call on banks to strengthen their capital in order to ensure their solidity. At times our interventions have been harshly criticized. We believe that they were decisive first to preserve and then to reinforce investors’ confidence in the banking system’s ability to withstand the impact of the crisis.
Thanks in part to this action, in 2013, notwithstanding the sharp increase in non-performing loans, the coverage ratio on them went up from 39 to 42 per cent.