The ECB's additional stress test raises Ibercaja, which would be the most solvent in an adverse economic scenario

The European Central Bank (ECB) has carried out an additional stress test on a series of entities that are not under the supervision of the European Banking Authority (EBA), which in the case of Spain only covers to two entities: Ibercaja and Banco de Crédito Social Cooperativo, the parent entity of the Cajamar group.

Ibercaja has been the best positioned entity in these stress tests. As indicated by the ECB, its impact by 2025 on its CET1 capital ratio would be less than 300 basis points (the ECB only reports ranges, not exact data as the EBA does).. In a statement, Ibercaja has specified that the impact would be 211 basis points.

This means that the capital ratio would be in a range of between 8% and 11% by 2025 in the event that an adverse scenario materializes, such as the one that the ECB and the EBA have submitted to European financial institutions. .

The impact in Cajamar is slightly higher. The bank would register a decrease in its CET1 capital ratio of between 300 and 599 basis points. In this way, solvency would reach the same range as Ibercaja, between 8% and 11%.

The ECB has noted in its review that the smaller banks in the sample experienced higher capital depletion than the larger banks supervised by the ECB, with consumption of 6.6 percentage points, compared with 4.6 percentage points, as a consequence of its lower capacity to generate income and higher credit losses in the projection horizon.

However, the ECB highlights that the CET1 ratio was still higher than its larger counterparts, with a result of 13.7% at the end of the stress test horizon, compared to 10.1% for the largest banks. , since its initial position was also higher, with a starting ratio of 20.2% compared to 14.7% for the largest entities.