Credit quality continued to improve, also benefiting from the support measures. While increasing slightly, the flow of new non-performing loans remained low in the fourth quarter, standing at 1.3 per cent of total loans, well below the highs recorded during the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis.
Moreover, the stock 14  declined further: net of provisions, the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans was 1.9 per cent in September, 0.3 percentage points lower than at end-2020. In this phase, supervisory authorities are focused on lending for which repayment has been suspended and on that backed by state guarantees.