UK consumers continue to borrow and spend on credit cards, according to the latest data from high street banks.
Consumers completed on £12.6bn of mortgages in July, 6% higher than a year earlier, with credit card spending up 6% year-on-year at 168 million transactions, an uplift on the previous month, findings published by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) showed.
Dr Rebecca Harding, BBA chief economist, said the trade body’s first set of figures since the EU referendum showed little has changed, but explained it was still early days with many borrowing decisions taken pre-vote.
“We are also clearly still a nation of shoppers and the Brexit vote has done nothing to change the fact that we use credit cards for short-term purchases. Strong retail sales figures appear closely associated with strong consumer credit growth.”
Earlier this month the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee identified “the high level of UK household indebtedness” as one “channel through which the [EU] referendum could increase risks to financial stability”.
Joanna Elson OBE, chief executive of the Money Advice Trust, the charity that runs National Debtline, said: “It is too early to say how borrowing will ultimately be affected by the EU referendum – but in the shorter term, it is clear that the UK’s consumer credit surge shows no sign of abating.”
Victoria Hartley is contributing editor at Mortgage Solutions, Specialist Lending Solutions, Your Money and Your Mortgage at London-based publishing company AE3 Media.
She has an MA in Radio from Goldsmiths after gaining a 2:1 in a Comparative American Studies BA at Warwick University. She also holds a TEFL qualification and taught overseas in Mexico and Japan from 1994 to 1997.
Her role includes editorial oversight of the news, analysis and features, event content management and strategic and editorial consultancy for the AE3 Media group. She is an experienced video, broadcast and live-event host and regularly chairs web and podcast debates and interviews.
Multiple award nominations have resulted in two wins: Santander Media Awards, trade journalist of the year and Headlinemoney Awards, mortgage journalist of the year (B2B). Here is one of the award-winning pieces: https://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/news/2011/07/21/exclusive-tale-bailey-fraud-witness/
Previous roles include editorships of Mortgage Solutions, consumer title What Mortgage and trade title Credit Today as well as a stint freelancing for a variety of outlets including The Guardian and Which? Money.
