Approved 16,000 Loans for Citizens’ Interim Financing

In less than two years since the introduction of interim financing, five of our savings banks – Prva, Raiffeisen, Wüstenrot, PBZ, and HPB housing savings bank – have approved nearly 16,000 loans for interim financing worth around 1.9 billion kuna.

These loans can be obtained immediately, without a two-year wait, in larger amounts and for a longer repayment period, which makes them significantly more attractive to savers than regular loans. Wüstenrot housing savings bank is the first in approving loans for interim financing, having so far provided approximately 670 million kuna, enabling nearly 5,750 of its savers to resolve their housing issues in this way. Following them are Raiffeisen and Prva housing savings bank, which together approved nearly 7,800 such loans worth a total of around 900 million kuna by the end of September. Much smaller amounts of these loans, totaling 2,450, were provided by PBZ and HPB housing savings bank, primarily because they were the last to start offering interim financing.

Specifically, PBZ housing savings bank introduced them a year ago, while HPB did so only three to four months ago. Raiffeisen savings bank, whose savers are increasingly seeking interim financing loans instead of regular ones, plans to approve at least 2,000 more such loans by the end of the year. Prva housing savings bank, on the other hand, intends to allocate at least another 200 million kuna of this loan money to its savers by the end of the year. Wüstenrot, let us recall, was among the first to start approving loans for interim financing back in November 2005. – Thanks to the significant engagement of our business network, we currently hold nearly 40 percent of the Croatian market for so-called loans for citizens’ interim financing – says Ivan Ostojić, a member of the Management Board of Wüstenrot.

The extent to which these loans have become more attractive to Wüstenrot savers compared to regular loans is evidenced by the fact that this savings bank approved, in value terms, as much as eight times more so-called interim financing loans than regular ones in the nine months of this year. – Interest in regular loans is declining also because the amounts of these loans are limited by the amount of savings, so the amount we can approve often does not fully meet the saver’s needs. On the other hand, interim financing loans are not limited (amounts up to 200,000 euros), have a longer repayment period (up to 24 years), and in terms of interest rates (fixed from 4.4 percent) are almost as favorable as regular loans, they emphasize at Wüstenrot.

Although there have been significant shifts in overall housing lending since the introduction of the possibility for interim financing of housing needs for citizen-savers, analysts believe that this should not be the end. On the contrary, new, even more favorable models for increasing overall housing lending should be constantly sought. First and foremost, our savings banks should be enabled (as similar savings banks in the world have) to directly finance housing construction, i.e., to approve financing for construction companies. Only in this way, they say, will citizens be able to buy even more new apartments at more favorable prices in the future. (Nikola Prskalo)