The suffering of the South African economy has left a lot of consumers struggling to remain financially stable.
About R13.6 billion worth of consumer accounts were not paid in time this July 2017, according to the newly-launched experience consumer default index, which measures the behaviour of credit-active consumers across formal lending sectors.
The recent numbers are, although, an improvement as compared to July 2016.
The statistics of South Africa’s debt are shocking with R14.7 million people in possession of credit card accounts and home, vehicle and personal loans.
The country collectively owes about R1.54 trillion in outstanding debt. “We’ve seen significant regulation introduced into the market, particularly the affordability guidelines, as well as a reduction in the caps applied to products and the interest rate reduction has decreased the ability of lenders to price for risk adequately”, said Esperian chief data officer, David Coleman.
Mosiac is an instrument used to measure debt trend per geological group. According to this instrument, consumers with less education were put into more debts when they could not pay off their accounts.
Edcon, one of SA’s largest retailers recently lost nearly 400k customers, blaming the National Credit Regulator’s new affordability regulations.
There have been new discovered ways of assisting consumers pay off their debt with retailers, loans and other related accounts.
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