Private Sector Credit MoM

Private Sector Credit MoM is market shorthand for Total credit, the monthly percentage change row in Financial Aggregates, a monthly statistical release. The Reserve Bank of Australia publishes it from data APRA collects from banks and other financial institutions under the Economic and Financial Statistics (EFS) collection.

It covers the stock of loans by domestic financial institutions to resident households and businesses in Australia, where stock means balances owed at month end. It excludes cross-border loans, loans to non-residents, and direct loans without an intermediary. Rapid growth can signal stronger activity but also higher risk to financial stability when debt is already high.

It measures end-month stocks and is released on the last business day of the month after the reference month. Each release page carries a release date line with the date only and no time of day.

Each release also shows year-ended percentage changes for the same rows, Broad money, and the component split. It breaks Total credit into its components and points to Table D2, Lending and Credit Aggregates, and Table D3, Monetary Aggregates, with standard methodology footnotes. The source line on every release reads Sources: ABS; APRA; RBA.

Historical levels and growth rates can be revised for resubmitted data, re-estimated seasonal factors, and incorporated securitisation data. The new collection caused larger-than-usual moves in levels between June and July 2019, with large revisions for a time after launch.

Total credit moves with its 3 loan groups, which can diverge from the headline.

• Owner-occupier housing: household loans for the borrower's principal home, where the borrower can generally have only one.
• Investor housing: all other household housing loans not for the principal home.
• Personal: household borrowing for consumption such as credit cards and other personal loans.
• Business: borrowing by non-financial businesses, used to assess business financial conditions, with a variant excluding warehouse trusts.

In the April 30, 2020 release for March 2020, Total credit rose 1.1% as business borrowing jumped 2.9%. Personal credit fell 1.4% while housing added 0.3%.

In the May 29, 2020 release for April 2020, Total credit was flat at 0.0% as business added 0.1% after March was revised to 3.1%. Personal fell 3.0% while housing added 0.2%. Broad money rose 2.7% then 2.9%, showing components can offset each other and a business jump can reflect precautionary credit line use, not strength.

1. Scope: APRA collects loan balances under EFS from banks and other financial institutions for the ABS and the RBA.
2. No double counting: if one lender funds another to make a housing loan, only the final household loan counts.
3. Exclusions and classification: exclude loans to non-residents, cross-border loans, and direct loans without an intermediary, then sort by purpose and residency. Purpose means housing versus personal versus business, with owner-occupier meaning the principal home.
4. Aggregate and adjust: sum each reporter's outstanding balances at month end. All growth rates are seasonally adjusted and adjusted for breaks as recorded in the table notes.
5. Publish percentage change: multiply the change in adjusted stock by 100 and divide by the prior adjusted stock. For example, 3800.0 billion dollars then 3822.8 billion dollars gives 0.6%, and a 10 billion dollar reporting break is stripped before dividing. Computing from published levels would give a wrong 0.9%.