(Yicai) May 28 -- Chinese providers of consumer loans are accelerating their sales of non-performing loans this year through discounts amid tightening credit conditions, including borrowers' income pressures.

Ten consumer finance institutions, including Bank of China Consumer Finance, have initiated 40 transfers of NPLs this year, exceeding the total of last year, Yicai learned.

The firms that tend to offer more expensive credit cards, personal loans, and auto loans than traditional banks are in a rush to improve their asset structures as the latest transactions of NPLs show lower average periods of non-payment and discounted pricing. 

For example, the average of days past due for the 20th transfer of this year was 107 days. It was unloaded by BOC Consumer Finance, targeting subprime loans of individual clients. In comparison, a veteran in the sector said to Yicai that last year, the average period usually exceeded 180 days.

Moreover, the initial ask for most of the 40 packages was 12 percent lower than creditor rights. For example, the value of unpaid principal and interest of a recent batch of the consumer finance arm of BOC tallied CNY360 million (USD49.7 million). However, the starting price was just CNY8 million (USD1.2 million), a discount of nearly 98 percent.

An analyst said that a key reason why platforms are hurrying up is probably linked to factors in the macro environment. Last year, some customers suffered slumps in income so the scale of NPLs began to surge, per the financial professional.

However, sales of bad debt account for a small share of total assets. Assets of 30 domestic consumer finance companies totaled about CNY1.2 trillion (USD165.6 billion) as of last year but their sales of NPLs amounted to just CNY18.4 billion (USD2.5 billion), according to data from a center of such transactions.

Editor: Emmi Laine