Reduction in monthly instalments can claim thousands of borrowers with Loans The Katseli lawAfter the Supreme Court's decision on how to calculate interest.
The decision concerns those who had taken loans and then have been subject to judicial arrangements for over-indebted households the Katseli Act and not automatically all those who have debts to servicers, are in private settings or are threatened with auction.
According to the decision, interest on the rules of the Katseli Act should not be calculated on the total outstanding capital, but on the monthly instalment set by the court. This may reduce the actual burden on borrowers who saw their installments increase due to the way in which interest was made.
However, the question of retroactivity remains open., as the Supreme Court was not invited to answer whether the new interpretation automatically occupies all previous cases. The question referred for a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice of Ioannina concerned the calculation of interest and not whether the decision produces horizontal effects for old or already decided arrangements.
The decision is of potential importance to a large number of borrowers subject to the Katseli Act, with market estimates raising the total number of relevant cases About 350,000The real benefit, however, is not uniform for everyone and requires control of each regulation separately, recalculation of interest and comparison with the payments already made.
Who can see reduction
Direct interest concerns those who have active judicial regulation and still pay installments on the basis of a court decision. In such cases, the new method of calculation may result in a lower monthly dose or a smaller balance until the setting is completed.
For a household with a housing loan, the difference can be substantial, especially if the dose had risen to levels that jeopardised the continuation of the regulation. Similarly, there can be a benefit for persons with a professional activity which had been subject to the Katseli Act, provided that their case is covered by judicial regulation.
The issue is even more important because the loss of a regulation does not simply mean a return to the initial debt. It can clear the way to new pressure from servicers, for direct payment claims or for enforcement proceedings.
Who's left out?
The decision does not cover those who do not have loans regulated through the Katseli Act. Out of the immediate field they stay borrowers who have made private arrangement with servicer, those who have joined the extrajudicial mechanism, those who have lost earlier arrangements and those who are already in the auction phase without a corresponding court decision.
Thus, this limit of decision can create strong precedent for a large category of debtors, but it does not change the overall landscape of red loans that have gone through the management of servicers.
According to the latest available data from the Bank of Greece, the total value of loans managed by debt management companies and transferred to specialised foreign financial institutions has reached EUR 80.02 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025Of these, EUR 25.18 billion relate to housing loans, EUR 10.13 billion loans to small and medium-sized enterprises and EUR 10.53 billion loans to freelancers, farmers and individual enterprises.
Weight on servicers
The figures show that the private debt problem is not limited to a category of borrowers. Head households trying to save their homes, small businesses that have been left without access to new bank financing and professionals who remain trapped in old debts.
The IMF has already pointed out that, despite improving bank balance sheets, housing credit and financing of small and medium-sized enterprises remain limitedOne of the reasons is the slow resolution of the large reserve of unperforming loans located outside bank balance sheets and managed by servicers.
For the borrowers of the Katseli Act, the next step is the έλεγχος της ρύθμισης και η αίτηση επανυπολογισμού, όπου προκύπτει διαφορά. Όσοι έχουν ήδη προσφύγει δικαστικά μπορούν να επικαλεστούν τη νέα νομολογία στο πλαίσιο της υπόθεσής τους, ενώ οι υπόλοιποι μπορούν να ζητήσουν πρώτα επανυπολογισμό από την τράπεζα, το fund ή τον servicer και, αν δεν εισακουστούν, να κινηθούν δικαστικά.
Για τους υπόλοιπους οφειλέτες, το πρακτικό μέτωπο παραμένει η διαπραγμάτευση με τους servicers, ο εξωδικαστικός μηχανισμός και η αποφυγή απώλειας περιουσιακών στοιχείων μέσα από διαδικασίες αναγκαστικής εκτέλεσης.
