Details from the August 2016 UK mortgage approvals and consumer credit data report 29 September 2016

  • Prior 60,912. Revised to 60,925

  • Net mortgage lending 2.943bn vs 2.550bn exp. Prior 2.665bn. Revised to 2.641bn
  • BOE consumer credit 1.574bn vs 1.400bn exp. Prior 1.181bn. Revised to 1.191bn
  • Credit card lending 398m vs 459m prior
  • Total lending -415m vs 2.181bn prior
  • SME lending -411m vs 611m prior
  • M4 money supply 0.9% vs 1.2% prior m/m
  • 5.4% vs 3.9% prior y/y
  • Ex-financials 10.9% vs 14.7% prior 3m ann

Mortgage approvals are down to the lowest since Nov 2014. What's perhaps surprising then is the rise in the mortgage lending amounts vs that drop. Consumer credit was higher but less of it was going on the old plastic.

The worst news out the lot is the drop in total lending, which as we can see from the SME part of that, made up nearly all of it. For the record, the CC lending and SME lending are part of the Total credit and lending numbers, not additional.

Overall, there may be some seasonality involved with the summer hols and we've not seen any sort of outright collapse in mortgage approvals and the amounts are holding up, which may also suggest there's a lot of re-mortgaging. The trend so far this year is clear though.

GBPUSD is down through 1.30 to a low of 1.2989.

UK mortgage approvals