The volume of bad consumer loans has led to contraction in the nation's credit card market, with card numbers seeing negative growth for the first time in the last 15 years, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said yesterday.
As of last month, the number of credit cards in circulation shrank 0.33 percent from the previous month to 4.56 million cards. Meanwhile, revolving credit grew a marginal 0.67 percent month-on-month to NT$495.2 billion (US$14.95 billion), while the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio edged down 0.08 percentage points to 2.37 percent over the same time, according to statistics released by the FSC yesterday.
Credit card cancellations have outnumbered new cards issued for two months in succession by 687,415 to 604,570, according to the latest statistics.
The number of cash-advance cards in effect has decreased for five consecutive months and is now at 3.59 million cards, down 2.18 percent from October. The bad loan ratio, however, climbed by 0.45 percentage points to 2.28 percent, the statistics showed.
The NPL ratio of all 46 local banks declined to 2.61 percent last month, down from 2.81 percent in October.
The coverage ratio dropped to 40.63 percent, down from 41.17 percent the
previous month. The coverage balance decreased by 7.63 percent
month-on-month to NT$173 billion, which was mainly due to Chang Hwa
Commercial Bank's (彰化銀行) NT$10.9 billion of coverage balance losses
after it wrote off NT$34.9 billion of defaulted loans last month.
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