Limited Recourse to Guarantors in Personal Bank Loans

Guarantees (along with their cousins, indemnities) are an important feature of banking law, which we have discussed in previous issues of the Client Alert. Conceptually, the main purpose of having a guarantor is to give the lender the comfort of having a reliable third party stand behind the obligations of the borrower, so that the lender may have recourse against the guarantor in the event that the borrower breaches its obligations to the lender. As a practical matter, the question often arises: if the borrower defaults, at what point may the guarantor be forced to satisfy the borrower’s obligations?

Until recently, Oman’s Law of Commerce (Royal Decree No. 55/1990) provided that a lender could always claim payment from a guarantor upon default by a borrower, without the lender having to first attempt to recover payment from the borrower. This rule meant that the borrower could effectively walk away from a default situation unscathed, while the guarantor would be left obligated to pay the borrower’s debt without having any defence that the borrower should be pursued first, or at least joined with the guarantor in any proceedings relating to the payment of the debt.

However, in June 2010 an amendment was made to the Law of Commerce to provide an exception to this rule in relation to guarantees of personal loans from banks. The practical effect of this amendment is that a guarantor of a personal loan from a bank may now request the inclusion of language in the guarantee stating that, in the event of a default by the borrower, the bank may not pursue the guarantor unless and until it has (i) obtained judgment against the borrower for the debt and (ii) enforced that judgment to the point where it has recovered all it can from the borrower to repay the debt. The purpose of such a clause is to ensure that all means of recovery against the borrower have been exhausted before the guarantor is called upon to pay the debt or any sums owing in relation thereto.

Please note that the aforementioned amendment does not apply to loans by institutions other than banks or to loans other than personal loans from banks. The amendment also does not go so far as to obligate banks to accept the guarantor’s request to include language requiring first recourse to the borrower.

Yet, at least this amendment does open the door to a more protected position for guarantors. Previously, any such provision in a guarantee requiring that a bank first obtain and enforce judgment against a principal would likely have been declared void by courts on grounds that it was against public policy. Now, if negotiations are sufficiently well-balanced, a guarantor may find it can obtain the bank’s agreement to incorporate language that will provide the guarantor with a certain level of protection.