Thursday, May 22, 2008
Credit agency in denial about crisis facing UK...
Telegraph: 'UK feels more stable' than US, says Experian
''...Britain is better placed to weather the brewing economic storm than the US because UK banks tightened up their lending criteria for consumers two years ago, the world's largest credit information agency, Experian, claimed yesterday. 'UK lenders started getting tougher about lending standards a couple of years ago' Don Robert, chief executive, said the group has seen "real evidence of the weakening consumer in the US" as problems in the mortgage market spread to "credit cards and auto finance". By comparison, in the UK "the quality of credit portfolios is holding up well".
...''
Posted by hpwatcher @ 07:57 AM (442 views) Add Comment
6 Comments
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1. waitingfor hpc said...
I don't think so - my brother has just got his mortage renewed - up 1%. But his 2 bed flat in Wimbledon was valued at £375,000?????
Also the broker offered him 'special' deals - my brother said he thought all that had stopped - but the broker said there was still ways to get these deals you just had to know how .......
2. Landofconfusion said...
My mother has just been offered a mortgage by Abbey (for divorce purposes) with monthly repayments in excess of what she could ever hope to pay.
The reckless spending isn't over yet...
3. renting2 said...
I wonder how much Experian/Equifax are losing due to vastly reduced lending (no credit searches required)? S'pose that's why they keep pushing their 'monthly check' to keep your credit history squeaky clean.
4. drewster said...
@renting2: You're quite right. Just yesterday, Experian announced more "cost-cutting measures" - newspeak for lay-offs - just yesterday.
In the gold rush, manufacturers of picks and shovels won the day. In the dot-com boom, Cisco Systems cleaned up nicely with their networking equipment, the picks-and-shovels of the internet. In the credit boom, Experian made the picks and shovels. Now they're suffering from the crunch.
5. quiet guy said...
@drewster
Cisco is an interesting choice of analogy. After the dot-com boom, huge amounts of high end communications gear was sold off from all the bust technology companies at heavily discounted prices - a painful experience for Cisco because they struggled to sell new equipment. Unlike housing, however, IT has scope for innovation to rebuild market share. The basic ideas behind housing, on the other hand have been pretty much nailed down for centuries. Is there scope for an 'advanced housing' boom in the future?
6. new user 2007 said...
6* mortgages are still available but we call them self-certLIED. They have yet to appear in the numbers.
As for tightening criteria...most of these day time "get as much debt as you like companies are" are actually owned by the same conservative banks.