La sfida per le banche nella “pre-crisi” dell’impresa: le incertezze a causa di una normativa inorganica

The prudential regulation of banks defines the default of a debtor, both according to probabilistic criteria and according to objective terms, with consequences on the capital provisions required and on the differentiated management of non-performing exposures. Neither prudential regulation nor bankruptcy law prescribe, if not in principle, the conduct that banks must adopt in the pre-crisis phase, when insolvency becomes probable and there is information asymmetry between creditor and debtor. However, the legislator, both European and national, has introduced procedures and instruments of a contractual nature, aimed at supporting the timely emergence and management of a company crisis, also in order to mitigate the effects of information asymmetries and opportunistic behaviours. Lastly, the recent changes made to the Crisis and Insolvency Code (CCII) have facilitated the use of out-of-court crisis management procedures and tools for SMEs. For commercial banks, costs of management performing SMEs exposures may be higher, both because the early emergence of the crisis entails an anticipation of the flow of provisions in the balance sheet and because the timescales required for the finalization of a potentially very large number of debt restructuring agreements, in the presence of measures to freeze exposures, can lead to a deterioration of the probability of recovery. This may induce the banking system, other conditions being equal, to react by rationing credit to SMEs and to transfer performing exposures to specialized intermediaries, starting with those classified as stage 2.