Equifax Canada released its Quarterly National Consumer Credit Trends Report on July 19, 2012.
As a collection agency with offices in Edmonton, Calgary and the GTA we recognize that the vast majority of consumers we inevitably end up dealing with are good people, with good intentions that have now simply arrived at the tipping point of having to either try to continue to rob Peter to pay Paul or, in the alternative, to make some hard choices in monthly budgeting in order to honour their outstanding financial obligations.
Click Here for detailed graphs including Average Debt, 90+ Days Delinquency Rates, and Bankruptcy Trends for Edmonton and Calgary.
Key highlights include:
- The level of growth, year over year in non-mortgage debt decreased 30%, (meaning debt levels continues to grow).
- Total consumer non-mortgage indebtedness in Q2 2012 increased by 3.1 % compared to 4.4% during the same period last year.
- Non-Bank Auto Finance loan and lease balances showed the largest increases by product type growing by 8%
- Average Credit Card debt has continued to decrease over the past seven quarters by 3.8 per cent in Q2 2012 from the same period last year.
- Average Bank Installment loans grew by 3.4 per cent over same period last year and average Bank Revolving Loans (Lines of Credit) grew by only 0.5 per cent.
- 90 day delinquencies have continued to improving, decreasing to a rate of 1.37 per cent as of June 30, 2012.
- Consumer bankruptcies have continued to show improvement, decreasing by 4.5 per cent from the same period last year.
With the velocity of new debt improving (decreasing) along with the improvements in delinquency rates and bankruptcy filings notwithstanding, an “economic soft landing” (if such a thing really exists in spite of how often we here economists and the financial media talk about it ) from our decade long debt binge is far from assured.