Debt Statistics today in the UK:

• The average household debt will decrease by £0.52 today (it grew by £11.11 a day in January 2008).
• 362 people today will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. KPMG estimate this will increase to 411 people a day throughout 2009 or 1 person becoming bankrupt or entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) every 3.5 minutes.
• In the last 12 months consumers saved an average of £2.96 every day.
• 2,000 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day in the first 3 months of 2009.
• 125 properties were repossessed every day during the last 3 months to end June 2009. The Council of Mortgage lenders estimates this will increase to approximately 178 a day throughout 2009.
• Unemployment increased by 2,411 people every day during 3 months to end June 2009.
• 3,036 people reported they had become redundant every day during 3 months to end June 2009.
• £476m is the amount that the Government Public Sector net debt (PSDN) will grow today (equivalent to £5,505 per second).
• £80m is the interest the Government has to pay each day on the UKs net debt of £801bn. This is projected to rise to £118m a day (£43bn) in 2010 – 2011 financial year.
• 33,600 applications for credit have been turned down every day during the past six months.
• 287 mortgage possession claims will be issued and 209 mortgage possession orders will be made today.
• 377 landlord possession claims will be issued and 258 landlord possession orders will be made today.
• 20.8m plastic card purchase transactions will be made today with a total value of £1.03bn.
• Citizen Advice Bureaus dealt with 7,423 new debt problems every day.
• The average car will cost £16.80 to run today.
• £578m will be withdrawn from cash machines today.

Plastic card & Personal Loans

• uSwitch calculations estimate that 7.3m consumers currently make over 38m cash withdrawals using a credit card every year. The interest rate applied to withdrawals has rocketed by 41% over the past three years from 21.22% APR in 2005 to almost 30% APR.
• uSwitch estimates that 16.3m consumers have an average of 2.3 credit cards they no longer use. Of those with unused credit cards, almost one in ten consumers (8%) have as many as four and 7% have between five and six. In total, these consumers have 38m credit cards that they don’t use, with a total credit limit of £200bn.
• uSwitch also estimate that 3.32m credit card applications were rejected in the last year and 1.2m people were turned down for increased credit limits.
• The Bank of England said default rates on unsecured lending and losses on unsecured loans in default were reported to have increased over the past three months to end June. Losses had increased by more than expected, particularly on other (non-credit card) unsecured lending. Further increases were anticipated.
• According to the BBA the proportion of credit card balances bearing interest was 72.6% in June 2009.
• Total credit card debt in July 2009 was £53.9bn. The UK collective credit limit on credit cards is £158bn, which is an average credit card limit of £5,129 per person.
• The average interest rate on credit card lending is currently 18.0%, which is 17.5% above base rate (0.5%).
• There were 146.3m debit, credit or charge cards in circulation in the UK at the end of 2008 according to APACS. An average 241 plastic card purchases were made in the UK every second during Q1 2009 using debit and credit cards (equal to £11,950 /second). 88 cash withdrawals were made every second (equal to £5,720 / second) from UK’s 64,000 cash machines during Q1 2009.
• There are more credit cards in the UK than people according to APACS. At the end of 2008 there were 71.3m credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 60 million people in the country.

Source: creditaction.org.uk