Americanas was irrelevant for the banking system, says BC – 05/10/2023 – Market

The BC (Central Bank) said this Wednesday (10) that the stress test carried out due to the crisis at retailer Americanas shows an “irrelevant” impact on the solvency of the banking system, which, according to the autarchy, remains resilient.

“As a result of the Americanas case, a specific stress test was carried out considering the possible default of this company and the network of suppliers that depend on it in a relevant way. The result of this test demonstrates an irrelevant impact on the solvency of the banking system”, said the BC in its Financial Stability Report, referring to the second half of 2022, but which also cited events experienced in 2023.

Americanas entered into judicial recovery after disclosing accounting inconsistencies in the order of R$ 20 billion earlier this year.

According to the document, “analyses carried out by the Central Bank continue to indicate that there is no relevant risk for financial stability”, in the midst of “high risk appetite” of financial institutions, despite a slowdown in the growth of the credit supply.

Even so, the autarchy pointed out that the Americanas crisis caused an increase in the cost of credit via the capital market and a more rigorous posture by financial institutions in operations involving drawn risk. “Considering this event and the environment of high commitment of income and indebtedness of families and reduction of companies’ payment capacity, 2023 starts accentuating the reduction in the pace of growth”, said the BC.

“The perception of economic slowdown and resilience of the national financial system is in line with the opinion of financial market agents”, he added.

At the same time, the municipality stated that the materialization of risk, although it cooled down in the second half of 2022, should remain high in the medium term.

“More restrictive granting criteria in riskier modalities reflected in a cooling of the materialization of risk in credit to families. However, the credit contracted by [pessoas físicas] with less restrictive criteria has not yet fully matured”, explained the Central Bank.

In line with the increase in risk materialization, provisions have increased and remain above expected losses, added the monetary authority, which, in turn, has reduced the profitability of the banking system.

According to the BC, the banking system remains with comfortable liquidity to maintain financial stability and the regular functioning of the intermediation system, while the capital base remains solid.

The report also showed the assessment by the municipality that liquidity stress tests indicate that the banking system maintains sufficient liquid assets to absorb potential losses in stressed scenarios.