Colombia remains “good pay”, says Asobancaria

The banking union, grouped by Asobancaria, reported that consumption by Colombian households has been leveraged by the expansion of credit, emphasizes that this was the engine of the historical growth of the economy in 2021; which allowed the production levels to be recovered to those recorded before the start of the lockdown .

“Despite the crisis caused by Covid-19, credit continued to flow, responding to the needs of Colombian households. The levels disbursed in 2021 for consumer and housing loans exceeded pre-pandemic levels, and delinquency indicators have been improving thanks to the good payment culture shown by Colombians,” said Hernando José Gómez, president of Asobancaria.

The entity showed that, the growth of the portfolio in housing and consumer loans were the highest. In fact, disbursements increased by more than 50% in both modalities at the end of last year.

The Financial Superintendency assured that consumer loans closed with growth in 2021, due to factors such as government subsidies and low interest rates, which reached their all-time low the previous year, according to the Banco de La República.

The regulator highlighted commercial loans and microcredits, which grew by 2.1 per cent and 3.1 per cent, respectively. The figures provided by both Asobancaria and the Financial Superintendency show that loans in general in Colombia increased by 4.3% at the end of December 2021.

All these debts have had a good repayment ratio, in total the financial sector issued 205.8 billion pesos in these loans. What the firm DataCredito assures that these, increased to higher levels than those achieved before the pandemic.

These applications were mostly made by people between the ages of 36 and 45, but the growth of young people between 18 and 21 years old stands out, who showed a significant growth of 97% in credits.

Strata 1, 2 and 3 were the ones that made the most requests. In addition, the figures highlight that small loans between less than 500,000 and up to 500,000 pesos are the most requested. Also, Colombians have chosen to pay higher installments in order to have a shorter payment period.

Cundinamarca is the department that applied for the most credits, the registry shows that it carried out more than 11 million operations, 11.4%, followed by Boyacá and the Santanderes with 9.1%, the Caribbean region with 7.5%, Orinoquía and Amazonas with 7.2%. Also, the opening of savings accounts grew by 69.9%; a total of 15.2 million were made so far in 2021.

The president of Asobancaria, Hernando Gómez recommended having healthy debts, among which are:

Other analysts advise users that before making the decision to purchase a credit or credit card, they should think twice about whether they actually need the loan or the card.

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