Credit Card Lending Survey Results for Fourth Quarter 2009

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced today (Friday) the results of its survey on credit card lending for the fourth quarter of 2009.

Total card receivables increased by 6.6% (or HK$4.7 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2009, after falling 0.2% 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 total number of credit card accounts also increased by 0.2 million to 12.4 million.

The rollover amount, which reflects the amount of borrowing by customers using their credit cards, declined by HK$0.4 billion to HK$21.1 billion at end-December 2009.

The charge-off amount declined to HK$564 million, or around 0.8% of average receivables, in the fourth quarter of 2009 from HK$720 million in the previous quarter. The quarterly annualised¹ charge-off ratio also declined to 3.10% from 4.08% in the previous quarter. The transfer of rescheduled receivables outside the surveyed institutions' credit card portfolios declined to HK$280 million from HK$390 million in the previous quarter.

The delinquent amount declined to HK$255 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared with HK$323 million in the previous quarter. The delinquency ratio also declined to 0.34% in the fourth quarter from 0.46% in the third quarter of 2009. The combined delinquent and rescheduled ratio (after taking into account the transfer of rescheduled receivables mentioned above) declined to 0.46% at end-December 2009 from 0.58% at end-September 2009.

Annex

For further enquiries, please contact:
Peggy Lo, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1687 or
Yokee Wong, Manager (Communications), at 2878 1213

Hong Kong Monetary Authority
12 February 2010

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