Leasing NPLs in Morocco

A non-performing lease is not valued like an amortising loan secured by a mortgage. The lessor is, in principle, the owner of the asset. Recovery runs through taking the asset back and selling it, not through a judicial sale of property the debtor owns.

Ownership and possession

In a finance lease, the lessor funds an asset and rents it. In default, the operational question is where the asset is, who holds it, and whether the contract allows the lessor to take it back. A lessee who keeps using a machine or a site without paying has not 'abandoned the collateral'. They occupy it.

The data room therefore needs the contract, the rent ledger, the amortisation schedule, the identity of the asset and, where it matters, the location. A balance without those documents does not show whether repossession is close or theoretical.

Resale value, not original cost

The purchase price of the asset, or the contractual residual, is an accounting reference. Recovery value is the net price a buyer of the asset will pay, minus the cost of recovery, storage, repair and time. Specialised equipment with no local secondary market can be worth little once dismantled.

Real-estate leasing — offices, retail walls, sometimes industrial — is closer to an asset analysis, but title and the lease are not those of a home loan. The gap between an appraisal and an exit value is the subject of collateral value is not recovery value.

Do not import a mortgage curve

Home-loan NPLs rest on a mortgage and an enforcement timetable of their own. A movable lease does not borrow that calendar. Applying the same delay and exit-rate assumptions overstates or understates according to the asset, never neutrally.

The useful split of a mixed book is: titled real estate, standard equipment, specialised equipment, and files where the asset can no longer be located. Each pocket has its own servicing cost. See pricing from face value to cash flows.

Classification

A lease carried by a supervised institution follows that supervisor's prudential grid, not an improvised one. The pre-doubtful, doubtful or compromised label states the accounting stage. It does not state whether the asset is still there.

This note does not publish a sector outstanding for non-performing leases. If the supervision report does not isolate a figure that has been checked, none is invented to illustrate the point.

In this series

• Collateral value is not recovery value
• NPL valuation in Morocco
• Finance company NPLs in Morocco
• Participatory bank NPLs in Morocco

This note is a method of reading a file or a published series. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it is not an opinion on a particular exposure. Serenor Capital does not buy claims for its own account, manage a fund, or carry on collection.

Sources and references

• Bank Al-Maghrib, Annual Report on Banking Supervision, financial year 2025 — PDF
• Bank Al-Maghrib, Circular No. 19/G/2002 of 23 December 2002 on the classification of claims and their provisioning, as amended — PDF
• Circular No. 1/W/2025, adopted on 5 December 2025, effective 1 January 2027. It does not restate the 2012–2025 figures discussed here.
• Serenor public series, banks, social basis — Morocco NPL Monitor and methodology