Credit Card Lending Survey Results For Fourth Quarter 2008

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced today (Friday) the results of its survey on credit card lending for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Total card receivables grew by 4.3% (or $3.2 billion) in the fourth quarter, after rising 0.8% in the previous quarter. The increase was largely due to festive spending around the year end and the payment of salaries tax using credit cards. The transfer of rescheduled receivables outside the surveyed institutions' credit card portfolios declined slightly to $143 million in the fourth quarter, from $144 million in the previous quarter. The total number of credit card accounts fell by 1.0%.

The rollover amount, which reflects the amount of borrowing by customers using their credit cards, declined to $23.8 billion at the end of December 2008 from $23.9 billion as at the end of September 2008.

The charge-off amount rose to $584 million, or 0.77% of average receivables, in the fourth quarter from $505 million in the previous quarter. The quarterly annualised¹ charge-off ratio rose to 3.09% from 2.74% in the previous quarter.

The delinquent amount rose to $263 million in the fourth quarter compared with $227 million in the previous quarter. The delinquency ratio rose to 0.34% in the fourth quarter after registering a record low of 0.31% in the third quarter. The combined delinquent and rescheduled ratio (after taking into account the transfer mentioned above) increased to 0.41% at the end of December 2008, from 0.38% at the end of September 2008.

Annex

For further enquiries, please contact:
Peggy Lo, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1687 or
Hing-fung Wong, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1802

Hong Kong Monetary Authority
13 February 2009

¹ This assumes the quarterly rate of charge-off is maintained for the next three quarters.