Personal loans down by almost 30 per cent from peak

Irish consumers are borrowing less and saving more, new statistics from the Central Bank show. According to the bank's latest trends in personal credit and deposits publication for the first quarter of the year, Irish household deposits rose once more , up by € 215 million, or 0.2 per cent, to € 87.2 billion at end-March 2013. This means that in the year to the end of March 2013, the net flow of personal deposits stood at € 290 million - in sharp contrast to the outflow of € 570 million reported in the previous year.

Mortgage lending fell by 1.9 per cent in the year to March 2013, following a decline of 0.8 per cent in the first quarter. According to the Central Bank, this is the thirteenth consecutive quarterly decline in loans for house purchase and the largest decline seen since June 2010. The outstanding amount of mortgage loans stood at € 84.3 billion as of end-March 2013.

Variable, tracker rate and fixed mortgages of up to one year accounted for 92 per cent of all outstanding mortgage debt in the first quarter, with tracker mortgages accounting for 50 per cent of all mortgages.

As more borrowers came off fixed rate mortgages, which accounted for just 8 per cent as of the end of March following a decline of € 780 million, there was a related increase in the value of standard variable rate mortgages, which increased by € 485 million during the quarter to take a 40 per cent share of all mortgage lending.

Personal lending fell by € 826 million, or 4.9 per cent, in the first quarter of the year, bringing the annual decline to 12.1 per cent in the year ending March 2013. The level of outstanding personal loans is now down by 29 per cent from the peak of the first quarter in 2009.