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Credit Card Lending Survey Results For Fourth Quarter 2007 The Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced today (Friday) the results of its survey on credit card lending for the fourth quarter of 2007. Total card receivables increased by 8.8% (or HK$6.2 billion) in the fourth quarter, despite a transfer of HK$126 million of rescheduled receivables outside the surveyed institutions’ credit card portfolios during the quarter. The increase was largely due to the payment of salaries tax using credit cards and festive spending around year end. The total number of credit card accounts rose further by 1.6%. The rollover amount, which reflects the amount of borrowing by customers using their credit cards, rose to HK$24.6 billion from HK$24.4 billion as at end-September 2007. The charge-off amount decreased further in the fourth quarter to HK$504 million or 0.68% of average receivables from HK$542 million in the previous quarter. The annualised1 charge-off ratio dropped further to 2.73% from 3.10% in the previous quarter. Notwithstanding an increase in the delinquent amount to HK$269 million at the end of December, the delinquency ratio dropped to 0.35% due to the strong growth in total card receivables. The amount of rescheduled receivables remained stable at HK$52 million at the end of December. The combined delinquent and rescheduled ratio (after taking into account the transfer mentioned above) declined to 0.42% at the end of the year. For
further enquiries, please contact:
Hong Kong Monetary
Authority 1 This assumes the quarterly rate of charge-off is maintained for the next three quarters.
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