Barclays offers 600,000 payment holidays across £16bn of loans and cards

To support customers throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Barclays has offered 600,000 payment holidays across the whole group. This total includes:

• 121,000 on UK mortgages;
• 157,000 on UK credit cards;
• 106,000 on UK personal loans;
• An additional 216,000 on credit cards in the US.

During the first half of the year, the value of Barclays’ loans and cards subject to payment holidays included £700m on UK cards (five percent of the portfolio), £600m on UK personal loan balances (11% of the portfolio), and £14.9bn on mortgage balances (10% of the portfolio).

Barclays suffered up to £3.7bn in losses on impaired loans in the first half of 2020. This has increased from £928m in the same period last year, a 300% change for the group as a whole, and included a £1.6bn charge in the second quarter.

Impairment losses
As the pandemic’s grip on the economy tightened in the second quarter, the bank saw losses on impaired loans surge across the board.

In Barclaycard Consumer UK specifically, the bank saw impairment charges rise 120% during H1 to £697m, compared with the same period in 2019.

Personal Banking impairment charges increased during H1 to £264m, a 200% increase from £88m a year ago.

In the first half of 2019, Barclays made allowances for losses of £6.7bn across home loans, credit cards, unsecured loans and other retail lending. This marks an increase of 27% on H1 2019.

James Staley, group chief executive, said: “This has been a period focussed on supporting our customers, clients and the UK economy through the COVID-19 pandemic, providing the people and businesses that we serve with a bridge to recovery in every way we can.”

“Since late March, we have helped to deliver around £22bn of vitally important Covid-19 government support measures to UK businesses to help fund them, including 250,000 government backed Bounce Back Loans totalling around £7.7bn, and about £2.5bn under the CBILS programmes.”

Staley added: “While the remainder of 2020 will be challenging, our diversified model means we can remain financially resilient and continue to support our customers and clients.”