Banks to get two-year guarantee to purchase ‘pooled assets’ of NBFCs

The government has allowed the NBFCs and HFCs to buy back their assets ‘after a specified period of 12 months’ as a repurchase transaction, on a right of first refusal basis

The Union government on Tuesday announced a scheme for providing a one-time credit guarantee to public sector banks (PSBs) for purchase of pooled non-banking financial companies’ (NBFC) assets.

Under the scheme, notified on August 10, public sector banks (PSBs) have been given a deadline of six months to purchase “pooled assets” of NBFCs at fair value. “One-time guarantee provided by the government on the pooled assets will be valid for 24 months from the date of purchase and can be invoked on the occurrence of default,” according to the notification.

This follows a Union Budget announcement made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman that the government will provide a one-time partial credit guarantee to PSBs for first loss of up to 10 per cent for purchase of high-rate pooled assets of NBFCs totaling Rs 1 trillion.

The government has laid down “stringent” criteria for eligibility of NBFCs and housing finance companies (HFCs) to become a part of the scheme and offer their assets for sale to banks. The NBFCs or HFCs should have made a net profit in any of the last two financial years, that is 2017-18 and 2018-19, and their net-performing assets should not be more than 6 per cent till March 31, 2019, the scheme said…