Budapest, 1 October 2025 — The MNB once again conducted its Bank Sentiment Survey in July 2025. Based on the responses, the banking system perceived slight deterioration in economic conditions in 2025 H1. According to the banks among the components of the Bank Sentiment Index, the uncertainty of the international and domestic economic environment, rising operating expenses, the tightening of the regulatory environment and deterioration in corporate creditworthiness contributed negatively to the assessment of the operating environment. At the same time, increased market competition continues to have a positive impact on the economic situation, which is also supported by the rising demand for household loans. Looking ahead to 2025 H2, banks expect the economic situation to remain unchanged.
The domestic banking system remains stable and its liquidity is ample. As a result, domestic banks have maintained their strong lending capacity, which provides an opportunity to support lending activity.
Factors determining developments in economic sentiment:
- According to the banks, the economic environment has deteriorated significantly. In 2025 H1, half of the responding institutions perceived a deterioration in the domestic macroeconomic environment, and a net 27 per cent in the international macroeconomic environment. Looking ahead, no further deterioration is expected by the banking system in the second half of the year.
- Market competition has intensified and thus continues to have a positive impact on the economic situation. Banks perceived the intensification of competition primarily against non-bank market participants (net 35 per cent), but one-quarter of the institutions also reported more intense market competition in payment services and in the retail and corporate segments. Looking ahead, a net 38 per cent of the banks expect an increase in the corporate segment and half of them in the retail segment, which may be driven by the introduction of the Certified Corporate Loan product certification, the Demján Sándor Programme and the Home Start programme to be launched in the autumn.
- According to the banks, access to funds has not changed significantly in the past six months. Looking ahead, 8 per cent expect access to short-term funds to deteriorate as deposit growth slows, and 11 per cent expect interbank liquidity to tighten as central bank programmes are phased out, while access to long-term funds is expected to remain unchanged.
- Credit risks have not materialised thanks to the stable labour market, borrower-based measures and high corporate liquidity; therefore, the contribution of portfolio quality to banks’ economic sentiment was close to neutral. The creditworthiness of retail customers has remained largely unchanged, but in the corporate segment a net 24 per cent of the banks reported a deterioration in creditworthiness in 2025 H1, and 16 per cent expect further deterioration.
- One-half of the banks perceived a pick-up in retail credit demand in 2025 H1, with demand for corporate loans remaining unchanged. Looking ahead, one-half of the responding institutions expect household loan demand to pick up in the next six months.
- 30 per cent of the banks reported tightening in the regulatory environment, and 27 per cent expect this to continue in the next six months. This can be explained by the tightened extra profit tax, the mortgage interest rate cap, the ATM law and the amended Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR3).
- Banks’ pre-impairment profitability has stopped declining, and only 43 per cent of the respondents reported an increase in operating expenses, which is lower than usual. Looking ahead, only a net 5 per cent of the banks expect their profitability to decline, while two-thirds anticipate an increase in operating expenses.
Overall, based on the Bank Sentiment Index[1] calculated as the difference between the number of banks perceiving an improvement and banks reporting a deterioration in economic activity, the respondents perceived a slight deterioration in their operating environment in 2025 H1 and expect the economic situation to remain unchanged in 2025 H2.
Changes in the Bank Sentiment Index by bank size
Note: The Bank Sentiment Index is the arithmetic average of seven components (economic environment, market competition, availability of funds, customer risk, demand, regulation, profitability). The last data point is an estimation. Source: MNB Bank Sentiment Survey
In the Bank Sentiment Survey, the net ratio is obtained by dividing the difference between the number of banks reporting an improvement and the number reporting a deterioration in response to the given question by the number of responding institutions. The answers are not weighted by the market share of the individual institutions.
Detailed results and the figures of the Bank Sentiment Survey are available on the MNB’s website at the following link:
https://www.mnb.hu/en/financial-stability/publications/bank-sentiment-survey
[1] The Bank Sentiment Index is made up of seven components: economic environment, market competition, availability of funds, customer risk, demand, regulation and profitability. The Bank Sentiment Index is given as the arithmetic average of the ratio of the difference in responses to each component (improvement and deterioration) in relation to the entire scope of observation.