KBC to repay €8.3bn to ECB this quarter

KBC, Belgium’s biggest bank and insurer, will repay €8.3bn of three-year loans to the European Central Bank during the first quarter of this year.

Nearly half of the money originally drawn down from the ECB was used to boost funding at KBC’s Irish banking operations.

“Given the substantially improved condition of the wholesale funding market and KBC’s very solid liquidity position, we decided to repay,” the loans, chief financial officer, Luc Popelier said in a statement, without specifying when in the quarter the repayments would be made.

Brussels-based KBC has covered a quarter of its 2013 wholesale funding needs in the first three weeks of the year, the group added.

KBC drew €3.5bn from the ECB in December 2011 to help replace funding at its Irish banking unit. It had got another €5.4bn “to further enhance its funding maturity structure.”