Once again, the CMS NPL Iberian Forum, organized by CMS Group Europe, counted with Servdebt sponsorship and the expertise of one of our Directors, as a Speaker.

This event took place on the 31^st of March, in a hybrid format, and reunited 60 speakers, throughout 8 sessions, where the debt management, secondary market and SME product took center stage during the discussions.

Luís Chaves, our Business Development Director, was part of the panel discussion with the topic "De la incertidumbre y parálisis a la reactivación y resiliencia: se comienza a ver grandes transacciones y se espera que el negocio de NPL’s alcance niveles preCovid para 2022" (in English, “From uncertainty and paralysis to reactivation and resilience: major transactions are starting to be seen and the NPL business is expected to reach pre-Covid levels by 2022”).

This panel sought to discuss and analyze the major portfolio movements that have begun to take place within the market and to share predictions for the future, by answering to the following questions:

• What will happen to prices?
• What is the level of specialization that has been achieved?

Regarding the evolution of prices, Luís Chaves noted that "we have a very high inflation, and this, logically, is not sustainable, so, what is going to happen is that, […] and this is on the books, in order to control inflation, money has to become more expensive. And this will have an impact and will tell us if we are going to have a more or less active market, with more or less volume.” Taking into account the several variables that are critical when setting prices, Luís believes “[…] everything changes very quickly; everything will depend on the interests, because, if we effectively have a relevant movement in terms of interests, I believe that there will not be, in theory, an option that is not reflected in the prices."

When questioned about the reasons that led Servdebt to bet more focused on the Spanish market despite the times of uncertainty, Luís replied about the company's ambition to growth, stating “[...] in terms of strategy, Servdebt has operations in Spain, but they were not with the focus they should have been, and for us it made no sense to have operations here, in a market that is a lot more active, a lot more interesting than the Portuguese market, and not grow".

This 9^th edition of the CMS NPL Iberian Forum was an “opportunity to do Networking, develop opportunities and discuss the most relevant industry topics”, and gathered more than 750 registrants, from 35 companies, from 9 countries featuring banks, investors, servicers, advisors and innovators in the market.