It's not quite so clear. The banks do owe deposited money to depositors, but they can also sell the mortgages themselves as bonds, and other entities buy the bo

It's not quite so clear. The banks do owe deposited money to depositors, but they can also sell the mortgages themselves as bonds, and other entities buy the bonds. In that case, the homeowners owe money to bondholders (including other banks in Italy and around Europe, private and public pension funds, university endowments, and others.) Even when the bank holds the mortgages directly, the bank does not owe the mortgage income to deposit account holders. The bank may owe interest to those accountholders... but today, that is likely at or near 0% rates. If payments on the loan are suspended for N months, the people who lose out are the bank's shareholders. In either case, this loss could be modeled as putting this month's interest payments at the end of the loan life, up to 30 years later, and discounting the amount received by the time value of money over that interval... or, alternatively, by moving all the interest payments back by N months over the lifetime of the loan and performing the discount that way; I think it works out to the same loss either way. (To be clear, this is a real loss, in the same way that if I took $500,000 from your savings and retirement accounts, and bought myself a home, and lived in it rent-free for 5 years, and give you back the same $500,000, you have suffered a loss, and I have enjoyed a gain.) It's notable that European bank shareholders haven't been doing well recently — for a variety of reasons. There may fundamentally be too many of them, with too many inefficient processes, being propped up by governments instead of failing in an orderly fashion and being consolidated. But that's a different policy discussion.