LINDA
NGUYEN
TORONTO —
The Canadian Press
Published
Monday, Feb. 10 2014, 4:42 AM EST
The love
affair Canadians have with debt is still going strong, according to a new
report by credit monitoring agency Equifax Canada.
Equifax
said Monday that its figures show that consumer debt, excluding mortgages, rose
to $518.3-billion through the end of November 2013. That was up 4.2 per cent
from $497.4-billion a year earlier.
Despite the
increase in debt, however, the overall delinquency rate — bills due past 90
days — declined to a record low of 1.12 per cent from 1.19 per cent in the same
period of 2012.
“The real
pattern that we’ve been observing is that Canadians are taking on more debt,
but they can handle it well and are making those monthly payments,” said Regina
Malina, director of analytics for Equifax.
Meanwhile,
overall consumer debt, including mortgages, also continues to rise — up 9.1 per
cent to $1.422-trillion from $1.303-trillion a year earlier.
Malina says
the data shows that Canadians are willing to take on more debt — from car loans
to credit card purchases — but are more aware of how important it is to keep
their debt levels under control.
High debt
levels are not a big concern in current conditions, which signal a stabilizing
economy, improvement in the unemployment rate and an anticipated gradual
increase in interest rates.
But Malina
says if any or all of these conditions change, Canadians should reconsider how
much debt they are piling on.
“That is
the reason why we should remain vigilant,” she said. “It’s easy to get
complacent. Even if the debt is up, and the delinquency is going down, it is no
cause for alarm but as I said, we have to watch out for these other economic
factors.”
Equifax uses
data from 25 million files on consumer credit history, including national
credit cards, loans and mortgages in compiling the report each quarter.
No comments:
Post a Comment