Application of Circular 1/2025 to statistics based on individual supervisory returns

From April 2026 onwards, the other monetary financial institutions (OMFI) balance sheet statistics incorporate the effect of applying Circular 1/2025 (Official State Gazette of 29 December 2025).
This circular, which amends Rule 52 of Circular 4/2017, introduces the category “Advances other than loans”, defined as short-term financial assets that do not accrue interest and present insignificant credit risk, which include interest-free payroll and pension advances.
As a result of this change, the advances item is no longer included in “Loans to households – Other” and is now recorded in “Other assets”, leading to a reclassification of around €10 billion in April 2026. The change is visible in the “Lending. Other resident sectors” tables for credit institutions as a whole (Table 4.3) and for deposit-taking institutions (Table 4.53), in which, moreover, a slight increase in the NPL ratio, as it reduces total credit (the denominator of the ratio).On the other hand, the reclassification also affects the “Other assets and liabilities” tables (Table 4.9 and Table 4.56).