Credit card spending grows by 4.4%

UK Finance has released its latest Household Finance update for January 2019 The figures indicate that £10.8 billion was spent on credit cards in January 2019, this was 4.4% higher than the same month the previous year.

The outstanding level of credit card borrowing also grew by 4.4% in the twelve months to January. Personal borrowing through loans and overdrafts grew by 4.7% in the year to January.

Gross mortgage lending across the residential market in January 2019 was £21.6bn, some 1.5 percent lower than the same month the previous year.The number of mortgages approved by the main high street banks in January 2019 was 0.3 percent higher than the same month the previous year; whilst approvals for home purchase were 1.5 percent higher, remortgage approvals were 3.1 percent lower and approvals for other secured borrowing were 6.8 percent higher. This follows several months of strong growth in remortgaging earlier in 2018, as customers took advantage of a competitive mortgage market to lock into attractive deals.

Personal deposits in total grew by 0.4 percent in the year to January 2019. This suggests that the recent rise in real wages has not yet translated into higher levels of savings. Deposits held in instant access accounts were 2.4 percent higher than last December, reflecting the preference amongst consumers to keep cash close to hand amid ongoing economic uncertainty.

Commenting on the figures Richard Pike, Phoebus Software sales and marketing director, said “Overall lending in January was 1% down on the same month last year but more starkly it was 9% below the previous six-month average.  We are not very often surprised by the figures these days, and to be honest the picture the figures paint for January is probably more encouraging than we might have hoped.  Unfortunately, there is nothing going on in Westminster or in Europe that is helping to alleviate the situation, and neither will it for some time.”

“However, there is a resilience that shows there are still people that want, and need, to buy and nothing in the political arena will change that.  The next few months will be telling, we could be looking at an even less rosy picture in a couple of month’s time, or we will see that despite uncertainty people carried on regardles .”