Serbian Banks Reject 310 Loan Relief Requests
Serbia's central bank resolved 2,321 loan relief requests in Q1, approving 79%. Banks rejected 310 of the 496 declined accounts; borrowers turned down offers in the other 186.
The National Bank of Serbia (NBS) resolved requests for loan repayment relief on 2,321 loan accounts in the first quarter of 2026, covering total debt of roughly 2.3 billion dinars (about 19.6 million euros). Banks approved 79% of those requests, or 1,825 accounts, carrying debt of 1.9 billion dinars (about 16.2 million euros) at the time the relief was applied. The remaining 496 accounts went without relief.
That remainder is not a single block. Of the 496 accounts where relief was not applied, banks rejected 310 requests, while in 186 cases borrowers themselves declined the measure their lender had offered. The central bank published the breakdown on July 22, alongside its quarterly data.
Why were the requests rejected?
Rejection is not tied to the circumstance behind the request, but to an assessment of the whole case. The NBS says that, based on practice built up through complaint proceedings, one of the more common reasons is that “the same borrower had already been granted and had already used relief on the same loan account in an earlier period.”
The second reason sits with the borrowers, and it accounts for those 186 accounts:
In a certain number of cases, the lender offered the borrower a different type of relief, but the borrower did not accept it.
These are debtors who held to their original request, most often for a full or partial debt write off, instead of the offered extension of the repayment term or lower interest rate. The statistics list them as rejected, even though the bank never said no.
The central bank also flagged, on its own, a common misreading of its own figures: “The largest number of relief requests in the first quarter of 2026 was filed on the grounds of job loss, and consequently the largest number of rejected requests also falls under that same ground, which does not mean these requests were rejected because of it.”
Job loss behind 53.7% of requests
The breakdown of reasons behind relief requests shows where the pressure on household budgets is coming from:
- job loss: 53.7%
- significant drop in income: 19.2%
- other circumstances: 14.6%
- serious illness: 8.7%
- difficult family circumstances: 2.3%
- serious injury: 1%
- divorce: 0.6%
More than seventy percent of requests, then, stem from a loss or drop in income, not from health or family reasons.
The breakdown by product type is even more concentrated. Cash loans account for 76% of resolved requests, or 1,761 accounts. Authorized overdrafts make up 7%, working capital loans and credit cards 6% each, and housing loans just 3%. The burden, in other words, falls on unsecured loans with shorter terms and higher interest rates, not on mortgages.
Banks offered relief on 913 accounts unprompted
Beyond the requests filed by borrowers, lenders applied relief on their own initiative to another 913 loan accounts. The contracted amount on those accounts came to roughly 968 million dinars (about 8.3 million euros), with debt of close to 874 million dinars (about 7.5 million euros). Added to the approved requests, relief was applied to 2,738 loan accounts in the first quarter overall.
That figure shifts the picture: banks themselves initiated one in three cases where relief was ultimately applied, based on their own internal tracking of early warning signs in repayment.
What the regulation introduced, and what comes next
The obligation took shape in two steps. The Law on the Protection of Financial Services Users, adopted in March 2025, required banks to offer relief to borrowers in difficult life circumstances before starting enforcement proceedings. The Decision on Loan Repayment Relief, adopted in September 2025, spelled out the criteria, and it took effect on October 15, 2025. The data for the first quarter of 2026 is the first full snapshot after a little over half a year of the rules being in force.
The National Bank of Serbia also pointed to what comes next. In complaint proceedings, it examines only whether the lender followed the prescribed procedure, not whether the decision itself was correct. Judging the substance of a decision falls to supervisory proceedings, where the NBS says it will take measures within its authority if it finds that a bank is denying relief without grounds. The next quarterly snapshot will show whether the 21% share of rejected accounts moves.
