The health and economic crisis, caused by COVID-19, has in recent months highlighted the best qualities of Spanish banks: their sound technical and financial preparation and, above all, their spirit of service to the community in which they operate. This has allowed them to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic from the very beginning. During the difficult months of lockdown, our institutions quickly set to work to alleviate the unprecedented situation their clients, families, and businesses were experiencing, continuing to provide them with financial services through bank branches or digital channels, as if nothing unusual were happening. And they did so with complete naturalness, without any technical incidents, and with a large part of their staff working remotely. <\/p>\n
During those times of health emergency, our banks also made themselves available to the authorities and were able to complement the Administration’s efforts where it fell short, either by advancing pension payments or ERTE benefits. Another important contribution has been keeping financing channels open, with the invaluable collaboration of the ICO and the Public Treasury, for companies with urgent liquidity problems, which has saved hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises from closure. <\/p>\n
This public-private partnership has enabled us to reach over 540,000 companies very quickly, through 820,000 operations guaranteed with endorsements totaling more than 77 billion euros. In this way, we were able to inject 102.144 billion euros into our companies, 70% of which were SMEs and self-employed individuals, precisely in the initial moments when lockdown measures brought many businesses’ incomes to zero and the need for liquidity was most pressing. <\/p>\n
Equally relevant has been the implementation of sectoral moratoria, which have helped alleviate the financial situation of a large number of families and self-employed individuals. In total, more than 1.3 million clients have benefited from moratoria\u2014mortgage and consumer credit\u2014of which 728,000 were voluntarily provided by the sector as a complement to public ones. As a result of all this, clients trust their banks, and rightly so: let us consider what would have happened in the toughest months of lockdown if banks had not been able to come to the aid of their clients. <\/p>\n
But now it is time to think about the future, about the role banks must play in the reconstruction of our economy and, in particular, in the distribution of European funds. What can the banking sector contribute to this process? Firstly, it can contribute its commitment to digital transformation and sustainability, but also the efficiency to deploy policies very quickly, financing those who need it and are in a position to contribute more in the future, as we have shown in the ICO guarantee plan. We are a guarantee of efficiency and an example of agility throughout Europe. <\/p>\n