Banco de Portugal publishes new information on the status of credit intermediary authorisation requests

Banco de Portugal received 5,314 credit intermediary authorisation requests in total by 31 December 2018. This number may rise as the Bank may still receive requests sent by post in the last few days of the year, as requests by post were allowed until the end of 2018. 31 December 2018 was the last day for natural or legal persons who already carried out credit intermediary activity and wished to benefit from the transitional arrangements set out in the law to apply for authorisation.

Banco de Portugal approved 924 authorisation requests and rejected 129 by 31 December 2018, while 4,261 requests remained under review. Of all the authorisation requests received by Banco de Portugal, 41% were sent in December.

Under the terms of the law, entities that already acted as credit intermediaries on 1 January 2018 and applied to Banco de Portugal by 31 December 2018 for authorisation to carry out credit intermediary activities may continue to exercise these activities until 31 July 2019, in the absence of notification of Banco de Portugal's decision on the application for authorisation and registration.

The credit intermediaries authorised to carry out this activity in Portugal are published in a list issued by Banco de Portugal. Each week, Banco de Portugal publishes information on the number of authorisation requests submitted, approved and rejected. This information relates to natural or legal persons applying for authorisation to carry out credit intermediary activity. It does not cover communications on credit institutions, financial companies, payment institutions and electronic money institutions wanting to operate as credit intermediaries, nor cross-border activity notifications from other Member States' competent national authorities on the exercise of this activity in Portugal – lists for which are available on the Bank Customer Website.