Frankfurt am Main – September 07, 2026 -- Germany is the only major European banking market where non-performing loans (NPLs) are rising again, with the stock of bad debt at German banks climbing 87% between 2019 and 2025, according to a new BearingPoint study covering 216 European banks over a 13-year period.
The increase runs counter to the broader European trend: most markets across the continent continued to reduce problem loans over the same period, even as the sector-wide average NPL ratio fell to 1.9%.