All 28 retail banks will give affected borrowers six more months without principal or interest payments. Here is what that sets as the expectation for any lender holding the same households' loans.
On 28 September 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Association of Banks announced that all 28 retail banks will extend the loan repayment grace period for individuals affected by the Tai Po fire by a further six months, to the end of May 2027. The grace covers both principal and interest.
The relief applies to existing residential mortgages, personal loans and credit card loans of affected individuals. For mortgages secured on units at Wang Fuk Court, the mortgagee banks will continue to handle cases flexibly, including extending the grace period until the newly purchased unit is ready for intake. Those Wang Fuk Court mortgage measures were first introduced by the HKMA and the banks in March 2026.
The measure is an industry arrangement among banks. For a bank, the operational point is that a grace period has to be applied consistently across loan accounts, collections queues and customer communications, and recorded so that every affected borrower can be shown to have received it.
For a lender with exposure to affected borrowers, the practical work is identification and recording. Can you tell, from your own records, which borrowers lived at the affected estate or were displaced? Is a payment holiday a status your servicing system can hold, so that interest, arrears ageing and reminder messages stop for the right accounts and restart on the right date? Those questions decide whether a voluntary relief policy is applied consistently or account by account by memory.
The extension also moves the end of the relief period to the end of May 2027. Lenders that granted their own holidays tied to the bank timetable should check that their end dates have moved with it.
Covenant Desk publishes regulatory context for Hong Kong lending operations, not legal advice. Confirm how anything here applies to your licence with your own advisers.