Credit Card Lending Survey Results For First Quarter 2008

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

Total card receivables decreased by 6.0% (or HK$4.6 billion) in the first quarter after rising by 8.8% in the last quarter of 2007. The decrease reflected the receding effect of the payment of salaries tax by credit cards. The transfer of HK$155 million of rescheduled receivables outside the surveyed institutions' credit card portfolios during the quarter also contributed to the decrease. The total number of credit card accounts reduced by 0.1%.

The rollover amount, which reflects the amount of borrowing by customers using their credit cards, reduced to HK$24.4 billion from HK$24.6 billion as at the end of December 2007.

The charge-off amount decreased further in the first quarter to HK$499 million or 0.67% of average receivables from HK$504 million at the end of 2007. The quarterly annualised¹ charge-off ratio dropped further to 2.68% from 2.73% in the previous quarter.

The delinquent amount decreased to HK$234 million at the end of March 2008 compared with HK$269 million at the end of December 2007. As a result, the delinquency ratio declined to a new record low of 0.32%. The combined delinquent and rescheduled ratio (after taking into account the transfer mentioned above) also declined to a record low of 0.40%² at the end of March, despite a slight increase in the amount of rescheduled receivables to HK$54 million.

Annex

For further enquiries, please contact:
Thomas Chan, Senior Manager (Press), at 2878 1480 or
Peggy Lo, Manager (Press), at 2878 1687

Hong Kong Monetary Authority
15 May 2008

¹ This assumes the quarterly rate of charge-off is maintained for the next three quarters.
² Not the sum of the two ratios, due to rounding.