Bank lending
In May 2026 lending to businesses and households grew by 3.0% year on year, accelerating from the previous month (+2.9%) and continuing the path of growth that began in March 2025. For households this is the seventeenth consecutive month of increase, and for businesses the eleventh consecutive month of growth in lending. In April 2026 lending to households rose by 2.6%, and lending to businesses by 3.1%.
Customer funding
Indirect funding — that is, investments in securities held in custody at banks — rose by 100.4 billion between April 2025 and April 2026 (39.5 billion households, 15.9 billion businesses and the remainder in the other sectors: financial companies, insurers and general government).
Total direct funding (deposits from resident customers and bonds) was up 2.6% year on year in May 2026, continuing the positive trend seen since the start of 2024 (+3.1% in the previous month).
In May 2026 deposits, in their various forms, grew by 2.3% year on year (+2.9% in the previous month).
Medium and long-term funding through bonds rose by 5.0% in May 2026 compared with a year earlier (+4.2% in the previous month).
Interest rates on bank lending
In May 2026:
- the average rate on total lending (that is, on loans taken out over the years) was 4.04% (unchanged from the previous month);
- the average rate on new lending to businesses fell to 3.51% (3.56% in the previous month; 5.45% in December 2023);
- the average rate on new house purchase loans was 3.49% (2 basis points above the previous month; 4.42% in December 2023).
Interest rates on bank funding
The rate on new fixed-term deposits (that is, certificates of deposit and time deposits) was 2.22% in May 2026, above the previous month (2.19%) and above the euro area average, which stood at 1.97% in April. Compared with June 2022, when the rate was 0.29%, the increase has been 193 basis points.
The yield on new issues of fixed-rate bank bonds was 3.51% in May 2026.
In May 2026 the average rate on total deposits (certificates of deposit, savings deposits and current accounts) was 0.65% (unchanged from April 2026 and above the 0.32% of June 2022).
The rate on current accounts, which are not an investment instrument and give access to a wide range of services, was 0.28% in May 2026 (unchanged from April 2026 and above the 0.02% of June 2022).
Spread between lending and funding rates
The spread on new business (the difference between the rates on new loans and on new funding) with households and non-financial companies was 184 basis points in May 2026.
Non-performing loans
In April 2026 net non-performing exposures — bad loans, unlikely-to-pay exposures and past-due and/or overdrawn exposures, net of the write-downs and provisions already made by banks — amounted to 25.9 billion euro, down from 27.7 billion in December 2025 (31.3 billion in December 2024). Compared with their peak of 196.3 billion reached in 2015, they are down by more than 170 billion.
In April 2026 net non-performing exposures accounted for 1.24% of total loans. That ratio was lower than in December 2025 (1.32%; 1.51% in December 2024; 9.8% in December 2015).
