• Summary
• Downloads
• Explanatory Notes
• Related Information
• Past Releases

KEY POINTS

• In seasonally adjusted terms, lending commitments to households rose 3.2% in August 2019, following a 4.3% rise in July.
• The rise in lending to households was driven by refinancing of household loans (up 7.7%), followed by investment dwellings excluding refinancing (up 5.7%) and owner occupier dwellings excluding refinancing (up 1.9%).
• In through-the-year terms, the value of new lending commitments is down 13.0% for investment dwellings excluding refinancing and 1.7% for owner occupier dwellings excluding refinancing on August 2018 levels.
• In trend terms, new lending commitments rose for owner occupier dwellings excluding refinancing (up 1.5%) and for investment dwellings excluding refinancing (up 1.6%) in August 2019.
• The number of lending commitments to owner occupier first home buyers rose 5.2%, while the number of lending commitments to non-first home buyers fell 0.7% in seasonally adjusted terms.
• Lending to households for refinancing rose 7.7% in seasonally adjusted terms. Refinancing of owner occupier dwellings was the largest contributor to the rise in August (up 8.4%), followed by refinancing of investment dwellings (up 6.1%) and refinancing of personal loans (up 7.9%).
• Personal finance excluding refinancing fell 2.2% in seasonally adjusted terms in August 2019 and is down 17.8% on August 2018.
• In trend terms, the value of lending commitments to businesses fell 2.0% in August 2019 and is down 5.3% on August 2018.

			Value of loan commitments
			Value	Month Percent Change	Year Percent Change
			$m	%	%
Trend
Total lending			65 987	-0.4	-6.2
	Lending to households(a)(b)		32 435	1.3	-7.1
		Lending to households for dwellings excluding refinancing(c)	17 836	1.5	-9.3
		Lending to households for personal finance excluding refinancing	4 804	-0.1	-12.9
	Lending to businesses		33 552	-2.0	-5.3
Seasonally Adjusted
Total lending			65 302	0.5	-5.1
	Lending to households(a)(b)		33 468	3.2	-4.0
		Lending to households for dwellings excluding refinancing(c)	18 438	2.9	-5.0
		Lending to households for personal finance excluding refinancing	4 712	-2.2	-17.8
	Lending to businesses		31 833	-2.1	-6.3
(a) Includes alterations and additions and refinancing
(b) Components may not sum to total due to independent seasonal adjustment
(c) Excludes alterations and additions

Lending to Households, Value of commitments

Lending to Businesses, Value of commitments

Over the past few years, APRA, the ABS and the RBA have worked to modernise the set of forms and banks have adapted their infrastructure to report on the new forms. The new set of forms is called the Economic and Financial Statistics (EFS) collection. EFS will give more detailed and better quality data on lending to households and businesses.

Changes from the implementation of EFS will be incorporated into the October 2019 publication of Lending Indicators (the replacement publication for Lending to Households and Businesses), to be released on 17 December 2019. An Information paper: Upcoming changes to Lending to Households and Businesses, Australia (cat. no. 5601.0.55.002) outlines the changes in more detail.


REVISIONS IN THIS ISSUE

There are revisions to the data in this issue due to the incorporation of more up-to-date data and concurrent seasonal adjustment. For information on seasonal adjustment and trend estimation please refer to explanatory notes of this publication.


ROUNDING

Where figures have been rounded, discrepancies may occur between the sums of the component items and totals.


PRIVACY

The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to the ABS.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.