All eligible people repaying a home loan taken out in PLN for their own housing needs can benefit from the legal “credit holidays”. An analysis by the Credit Information Bureau (BIK) shows that this is nearly 3.41 million people i.e. 83.8% of borrowers, with housing loans.

In June this year, all borrowers collectively repaid principal and interest instalments on non-delinquent debt of PLN 8.9 billion. Of this amount, PLN 3.33 billion was repaid by borrowers eligible for deferred instalments on home loans. “This means that if all eligible persons took advantage of this privilege, the banks would receive an amount lower by 37% per month on account of instalments and interest”, says Dr Waldemar Rogowski, chief analyst at BIK.

An opinion poll conducted by Quality Watch on behalf of BIK in July this year shows that two-thirds of mortgage holders would like to use the privilege of deferring the repayment of credit instalments not only when there are problems with their repayment, but also for no such reason. There are also some people who overpay their loans – they prefer to pay off the capital and do not want to pay increasing interest.

More than half of those surveyed (56%) with a mortgage said that they are planning to use it rationally, i.e. to overpay instalments in the following months.

Overall, Poles do not want to pay interest to the banks, but the capital. This is the position of 38% of people who would use their ‘holiday gift’ to overpay their loan instalments in the following months.

“In June 2021, borrowers made mortgage overpayments of PLN 600 million, while in June this year the amount was three times higher at PLN 2.6 billion. I expect overpayments to increase in the coming months. From the perspective of borrowers, this seems rational, as this lowers the cost of handling the loan and decreases the amount of capital outstanding”, Rogowski explains.

Adrian Andrzejewski