This is a translation of the original article in Portuguese. Read the original (Português).
The number of Brazilians in debt with a significant risk of being unable to pay what they owe has reached 20.3 million, according to Brazil’s central bank (Banco Central, or BC). That is a 75% increase since June 2021. In response, the BC approved three resolutions that change how banks and lending companies offer credit to consumers, including restrictions on loan advertising.
The group at risk represents 17% of all debtors in the National Financial System, reported the newspaper JM. In practice, it is as if one in every six Brazilians with debts at banks and lending companies were close to being unable to honor their payments.
The new rules, however, do not take effect immediately. As the newspaper Folha de Pernambuco detailed, the resolutions will come into force throughout 2027.
Resolution 602 takes effect on March 31, 2027, and requires mechanisms to block so-called active credit offers, those in which a bank or lending company reaches out to a customer to offer a loan without the customer having asked for it.
Resolution 601 creates, starting July 1, 2027, the Consolidated Debt Dashboard. The tool will bring together a consumer’s debts and issue an alert when debt payments reach 40% of income, meaning that nearly half of what a person earns is committed to paying loans and financing.
Resolution 603 addresses a situation that has become common on cell phones: credit offers during a Pix transfer. The rule will regulate this type of approach, in which a customer who tries to send money without sufficient balance receives a loan proposal on the app’s own screen.
For consumers, the change affects three fronts: loan advertisements, which will face restrictions; the harassment of unsolicited offers, which may be blocked; and visibility into the size of their own debts, which will get a single panel with a warning alert.
The rise in risky indebtedness is occurring in an environment of expensive credit, as O Fio has already reported: the Selic, Brazil’s benchmark interest rate, is at 13.75%, Brazil has some of the highest real interest rates in the world, and many Brazilians take on side gigs to supplement their income and make ends meet each month.
In this scenario, easy credit, offered with a few taps on a cell phone, often appears as a quick way out for those under financial pressure, but it can deepen the problem when interest accumulates. This is the cycle the new central bank resolutions aim to curb, by making it harder for credit offers to reach precisely those whose budgets are already strained.
Reporting from Folha de Pernambuco (p. 8 (nacional)), JM (p. 8 (nacional)).
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