Milan, 7 March 2022 - The month of February proved to be positive for both personal loans and finalized loans, which recorded growth figures compared to January, against a slight decrease in mortgages.
This was revealed by the new Italian Credit Report - Trends & Insights by Experian, which recorded significant growth compared to the previous month for loans, with personal loans increasing by 7.24% and special purpose loans by 4.98%.
On the other hand, there was a decrease in mortgage requests, -4.08% compared to January data, although balanced by a slight increase in the amount financed, which went from €136,495 to €137,983.
On the other hand, the increase in the use of digital platforms for credit requests is confirmed, with a +1.3% compared to January. If analyzed over longer periods of time, the shift to digital proves to be an unstoppable trend: between February 2022 and February 2019, the increase was +122%.
"During February we saw confirmation of the generally positive trend that began in January, with the sole exception of mortgages, which are bucking the trend," explains Armando Capone Chief Commercial Officer of Experian.
"Particularly promising is the growth in personal loans which, if confirmed in the coming months, could come even closer to pre-pandemic values. This is another important sign of a return to normality, also in view of the hoped-for conclusion of the state of emergency in Italy.
"The prospects in this sense are for a possible further positive impact on public confidence and, consequently, on credit. Lenders will rely on credit information to ensure people are offered loans they can afford to repay."
The redemption of loans
The run-up in personal loans, the financing that had suffered most from the Covid crisis, towards pre-pandemic values continues. During February, Experian shows significant growth returning to February 2020 levels, although the applications recorded in February 2019 remain far off. These data in detail:
Finalized lending also shows slight growth during February. In this case, however, the 2019 figures are already far exceeded, confirming that Italians have returned to rely on this type of financing:
Cell phones remain the top reason for applying for a special purpose loan, although the percentage decreases from 32.9% in January 2022 to 28.1% in February 2020. On the other hand, applications for a new car purchase are growing, from 10.10% to 12.6%, and for a used car, from 6.9% to 7.2%.
Month of stalemate for mortgages
On the other hand, we note a slightly negative month for mortgages, with the indicator down 4.08% compared to January. In particular:
As mentioned, the trend in mortgages was generally negative, with no major regional fluctuations. Liguria (-5%), Basilicata (-4.71%) and Tuscany (-3.78%) stand out as negative. There were few positive regions, always a very small variation: the only one to exceed 1% was Friuli (+1.63%).
Italian Credit Report - Trends & Insights
The Italian Credit Report - Trends & Insights regularly analyses the trend of requests for financial instruments on the basis of the data available in Experian's Credit Information System, which collects over 80 million credit positions.
Analyses are performed on Ascend, the innovative integrated big data and analytics platform recently launched by Experian.
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