Household savings flat
The trend of high household savings rates triggered by the financial crisis appears to have come to end. Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and Reserve Bank figures published yesterday show that the savings market is flat.According to APRA's banking statistics, there was no growth in household deposits in June, compared with the previous month, and growth of only 1.4 per cent in the June quarter compared with the previous quarter.The latest Reserve Bank financial aggregates show that term deposit balances with banks fell 1.5 per cent in June, compared with the previous month. Term deposit balances have fallen 2.6 per cent since the start of the year.For the past few years authorised deposit-taking institutions have been able to rely on annual growth rates in deposits of around ten per cent. Banks like to maintain consistent deposit funding ratios, so it remains to be seen whether the slowdown in savings will have an impact on lending growth.On the lending side, the RBA reported that housing credit balance grew by 0.6 per cent in June, compared with the previous month, and by 6.4 per cent over the 12 months to June (comparing quarter on quarter the annual growth rate is 6.9 per cent).Loans to property investors continued to grow faster than loans to owner-occupiers. Loans to owner-occupiers grew by 0.4 per cent in June, compared with the previous month, while loans to investors grew by 0.9 per cent. Over the 12 months to June loans to owner-occupiers grew by 5.3 per cent, while loans to investors grew by 8.7 per cent.Personal loans balance have grown just 0.7 per cent over the past year and business loan balances have grown 3.5 per cent.