Kiwis get thrifty as borrowing flatlines

Credit growth flatlined last month, adding to the evidence of a change to less improvident behaviour by New Zealanders.

The total stock of loans to households, businesses and farmers from banks and non-bank lending institutions increased just $55 million or 0.02 per cent to $306.9 million.

In February last year lending was 1.1 per cent higher, following growth of just 0.8 per cent the year before. That contrasts with double-digit annual credit growth rates during the mid-2000s.

The official household saving rate has returned, just, to positive territory indicating households are, in contrast to the past 15 years, spending less than their income.

Mortgage debt increased 1.2 per cent over the past year to $173 billion, a slowdown from annual growth of 1.6 per cent the year before and 3.5 per cent the year before that.

As at the end of February, 62 per cent of housing loans were at floating rates averaging 5.73 per cent, while a further 23 per cent of the mortgage loan book was at fixed rates with less than a year to run.

Businesses owe their banks $74 billion, up 1.8 per cent on a year earlier, while farm debt - which had quadrupled during the 2000s - at $47.5 billion was just 0.1 per cent higher than in February 2011.

The Reserve Bank, in its March monetary policy statement, pointed to a breakdown in the traditional relationship between house sales, which have picked up, and credit growth as evidence of behavioural change.

"New home buyers may have become more cautious over the period and increased the size of their deposits. This would be in keeping with the Reserve Bank's credit conditions survey, which reports a tightening in lending criteria by banks," it said.

"It could also represent households increasing principal repayments on outstanding mortgages. This could arise from households maintaining their mortgage payments as interest charges fell over the past few years."