APRIL KEY FIGURES

		Mar 2015	Apr 2015	Mar 2015 to Apr 2015
		$m	$m	% change
TREND ESTIMATES
	Housing finance for owner occupation(a)	18 682	18 924	1.3
	Personal finance	8 858	8 901	0.5
	Commercial finance	44 970	46 059	2.4
	Lease finance	530	539	1.6
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED ESTIMATES
	Housing finance for owner occupation(a)	18 647	19 218	3.1
	Personal finance	8 786	9 091	3.5
	Commercial finance	44 698	46 474	4.0
	Lease finance	542	533	-1.5
(a) Excludes alterations and additions

Personal Finance

Commercial Finance

APRIL KEY POINTS


APRIL 2015 COMPARED WITH MARCH 2015:

HOUSING FINANCE FOR OWNER OCCUPATION

• The total value of owner occupied housing commitments excluding alterations and additions rose 1.3% in trend terms, and the seasonally adjusted series rose 3.1%.

PERSONAL FINANCE

• The trend series for the value of total personal finance commitments rose 0.5%. Fixed lending commitments rose 1.5%, while revolving credit commitments fell 1.0%.
• The seasonally adjusted series for the value of total personal finance commitments rose 3.5%. Fixed lending commitments rose 5.8% and revolving credit commitments rose 0.1%.

COMMERCIAL FINANCE

• The trend series for the value of total commercial finance commitments rose 2.4%. Fixed lending commitments rose 3.4%, while revolving credit commitments fell 0.4%.
• The seasonally adjusted series for the value of total commercial finance commitments rose 4.0%. Revolving credit commitments rose 4.1% and fixed lending commitments rose 3.9%.

LEASE FINANCE

• The trend series for the value of total lease finance commitments rose 1.6% in April 2015 and the seasonally adjusted series fell 1.5%, following a fall of 1.3% in March 2015.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
May 2015	13 July 2015
June 2015	10 August 2015
July 2015	11 September 2015
August 2015	12 October 2015
September 2015	13 November 2015
October 2015	11 December 2015

REVISIONS

In this issue revisions have been made to the original series as a result of improved reporting of survey and administrative data. These revisions have an impact on:

• Owner occupied housing values for periods March 2014 to March 2015
• Commercial Finance values for periods January 2014 to March 2015
• Personal Finance values for periods January 2014 to March 2015
• Lease Finance values for periods January 2014 to March 2015
• Investment housing values for periods March 2014 to March 2015

COVERAGE

Statistics in this publication are currently derived from returns submitted to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) under the Financial Sector (Collection of Data) Act 2001. The reporting population underwent changes in 2014.

To minimise the reporting load placed on businesses the monthly reporting threshold for non-banks was revised in January 2014 to provide 95 per cent asset coverage of the non-bank sector. Only non-banks with total assets at or above the reporting threshold of $200 million are required to report to APRA monthly. All banks report to APRA.

Non-banks with assets below the new threshold ceased reporting from January 2014. Some other non-banks with assets above the threshold started reporting to APRA from January 2014. The lending commitments of some of those which started reporting in January 2014 were excluded from the January 2014 to March 2015 published statistics pending data quality assessment. Further improvements to the non-banks reporting of administrative data have been included in this April 2015 issue. Revisions have been made to previously published statistics for the periods January 2014 to March 2015 and a trend break was added in January 2014 to the Lease Finance series published in Tables 1 and 27 due to this improved reporting.


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