Like many southern European countries, Albania has suffered significantly since the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. The country's commercial banks’ non-performing loan (NPL) rate peaked at 25% of gross loans in September 2014 but has since declined to 13.2%, thanks to write-offs and restructurings. The government believes the worst of the crisis is in the past and expects the NPL rate to fall to single digits by the end of 2018. Since the crisis, Albania’s banks have adopted much stricter lending criteria and the weakest banks have been acquired.
One such acquisition was that of Veneto Banka in July 2017. The subsidiary of troubled Italian lender Veneto Banca was part of the rescue by Italy’s second largest bank by assets, Intesa Sanpaolo. This year, American Bank of Investments, an Albanian lender backed by US private equity firm NCH Capital, said it would acquire the local subsidiary of the National Bank of Greece, NBG Bank Albania. This would reduce the number of commercial banks in the country to 14.
