Money and Credit - December 2017

Our monthly Money and Credit statistical release is made up of three parts: broad money and credit, lending to individual and lending to businesses.

Published on 30 January 2018

Key points from the data to the end of December 2017 include:

Broad money increased by £8.9 billion in December (Table A). Within this, the combined flow of private non-financial corporations' (PNFC's) and households' M4 was -£1.7 billion (Tables B and C), the lowest since February 2011. The flow of non-intermediate other financial corporations' (NIOFC's) M4 was £10.6 billion, well above its recent average (Table D).
The net flow of sterling credit was £11.9 billion in November (Table A). The flow for households and PNFCs were both broadly in line with their recent averages (Table B and C).

Annual growth in secured lending was unchanged at 3.3% in December (Table H), with net lending remaining stable at £3.7 billion.
Mortgage approvals decreased in December (Table I), with falls for both house purchase and remortgaging approvals. House purchase approvals were the weakest since January 2015 and remortgaging approvals fell to 46,475, following strength in October and November.
Consumer credit net lending was £1.5 billion in December, broadly in line with outturns during 2017 (Table J). The annual growth rate ticked up to 9.5% in December.

PNFCs raised £6.5 billion from UK MFIs and Capital Markets in December (Table L). Net issuance of commercial paper was the highest since July 2003.
Lending to non-financial businesses fell by £1.0 billion in December (Table M). Loans to small-and-medium sized enterprises fell by £0.4bn, the largest decline since December 2014.