5.2.3 Grouping exposures

The EBA Guidelines on credit risk management practices and accounting for expected credit losses²⁵ describe the policies for credit institutions of grouping exposures with shared credit risk characteristics. Homogeneous portfolios should be built up in order to tailor treatments specifically to NPEs. Credit institutions should consider designing customised processes for each portfolio, with a dedicated expert team taking ownership of each. NPE portfolios should be analysed with a high degree of granularity, resulting in clearly defined borrower subportfolios. For these analyses, credit institutions should develop appropriate management information systems and sufficiently high data quality.

²⁵ Guidelines on credit institutions’ credit risk management practices and accounting for expected credit losses (EBA/GL/2017/06).

A list of potential selection criteria for grouping retail NPEs into portfolios is contained in Annex 1.

For corporate NPE portfolios, grouping by asset class or sector (e.g. commercial real estate, land and development, shipping, trading businesses) should be considered a key driver for NPE WU specialisation. These portfolios should then be further divided in line with the NPE strategy and the level of financial difficulty to ensure that workout activities are sufficiently focused.