Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Britain's banks turn cyber sleuths to crack £75 billion mortgage mystery

Britain's banks turn cyber sleuths to crack £75 billion mortgage mystery

That is the type of question British banks are asking as they try to work out whether borrowers owing some 75 billion pounds in home loans will be good for it when a payment holiday, introduced when the coronavirus crisis first hit, ends.

Lenders are scouring current account transactions, credit card spending and trends in Internet searches for clues about customer finances as part of a wider effort to understand the damage to their portfolios from the pandemic.

The once-in-a-lifetime mix of economic shutdowns, unprecedented government support and an uncertain path to recovery have upended old risk models, based on historical data, necessitating a more dynamic, forward-looking way of analysing lending risk. The searches involve pouring over anonymised data and are a way of surveying overall risk rather than individual customer habits.

The stakes are high: underestimate the risks and bank bosses and shareholders could be in for a nasty jump in losses, overestimate them and banks could rein in lending when it is needed most.

Executives at Britain’s top banks say calculating the hit to loans, from mortgages to corporate debt, is the biggest risk management challenge they have seen since the 2008 crisis.

"This time there is economic volatility beyond what we have ever seen, there is unprecedented government support, and to try and model it all with 100% accuracy is impossible," said Matt Waymark, director of finance at NatWest Group NWG.L.

Some 300 billion pounds in payment breaks were granted on British mortgages, part of a series of measures aimed at propping up households hit by the virus, and around 70-80% of those have resumed payments, bankers and analysts told Reuters.

That leaves nearly $100 billion (77.2 billion pounds) outstanding at a time when banks also face wider defaults on their corporate loans and plunging income due to near-zero interest rates.

That is a small proportion of the £1.5 trillion in mortgages outstanding in Britain, but a big default on that stock of home loans coupled with an expected rise in defaults on corporate loans could see bad debts rise from 1.4% of their books to 4.1% by 2022, analysts at ratings agency Moody’s said.

That would be higher than the peak rate recorded after the 2008 crisis, of 3.96% in 2011.

The first real test is expected to be in the fourth quarter of this year, when the government’s furlough job support ends along with various business loan schemes.


UNPREDICTABLE THREATS


Government supports have so far meant there hasn’t been much of an increase in bad debts. The challenge in working out whether that will suddenly change is exacerbated by the fact that some customers not in financial difficulty took out payment holidays to pay down more expensive debt such as credit cards, leading to record levels of consumer debt repayment in Britain.

“We’ve seen very little so far in terms of actual defaults, whereas the models would’ve predicted a big hit following the recent economic dip, so the question is whether government support schemes are merely delaying the problem or actually mitigating it,” Waymark said.

The question is particularly pressing for British banks because of the speed and scale with which the scheme was put in place in Britain and then taken up.

Some 30% of British mortgages repackaged into bonds were in a holiday payment scheme, compared to 5% of French mortgages and 10% of Spanish home loans, according to data from S&P Global.

The pressure to understand the risks has meant banks in Britain are using data and technology in new ways and at a greater level of intensity than before, something that could be useful for modelling other unpredictable threats, such as climate change, according to Rishi Khosla, Chief Executive of OakNorth bank, which markets its portfolio diagnostics technology to other lenders.

It is accelerating a trend already apparent here before the pandemic of large banks mining customer data to boost revenue.

To check on the health of corporate borrowers, for example, banks have started using algorithms to scan news headlines for negative stories about particular companies and sectors so they can anticipate credit downgrades.

“I think there is a rising awareness that some level of forward look is important to complement standard risk rating approach,” Khosla said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×