"What we see in the first three weeks of April, when we compare the month of March with that of April, what we are seeing is a 40 percent drop in mortgage credit, which is normal," said Pablo Forero at the press conference about the release of the bank's results in the first quarter (profits of 6.3 million Euros).

The leader of BPI, who will abandon his post to retire, being replaced by João Pedro Oliveira e Costa, recalled that "with confinement, appraisers cannot go to evaluate houses and buyers cannot go to visit houses".

Regarding future prospects in the housing loan market, in the face of the pandemic, the manager stated that if one speaks "in a serious way", there is no clear perspective, but said he believes that "if society regains normalcy, in a month or two the housing credit market regains normality".

"Another thing is what will happen when looking for mortgage loans. And I think that, as always, it will depend on two factors. One is unemployment. If there is more unemployment, we have to imagine that we will have less demand. And then also price expectations", also referred Pablo Forero.

Regarding price expectations, the executive president of BPI said that when they go up, "people accelerate their investment decisions", but if prices are expected to fall, "naturally the demand for new housing tends to fall".