You will also see that the Central Bank introduced and subsequently updated provisioning guidelines to ensure that there was consistency and conservatism in the recognition and provisioning of NPLs. Towards the end of the Programme, in 2013, we then repeated the exercise of assessing the strength of the banks’ balance sheets, the adequacy of capital and the recognition of NPLs.
We challenged progress every step of the way, going to the outer edge of our remit to do so – challenging the organisational structure and resource capacity, challenging skills and experience, challenging governance and oversight, policies and procedures, workout strategies and execution ability.