Despite the current problems in the banking industry and economic slowdowns, it appears that more consumers than ever are applying for holiday loans and personal loans. The figures surprised some analysts who expected consumers to batten down the hatches thanks to all the bad news and economic uncertainty. However, most believe that the trend will reverse in the next few months as consumers start looking at their finances more closely. So far, the numbers for February of this year however showed that people are still interested in and getting holiday loans as well as other personal loan products. Whether or not these figures will change for March has not yet been determined.”The slowdown in consumer spending … will eventually cause personal loan approvals to fall, although there is little evidence of this to date,” said Citibank’s director of economic and market analysis, Shane Lee.Also common right now besides holiday loans are consolidation loans as consumers attempt to pay down their high interest credit card debt.”Within personal lending, loans taken out by people to consolidate existing debt were up 24.3 per cent on a year ago, while refinancing of existing loans soared by 54.2 per cent in annual terms,” said Savanth Sebastian, an equities economist at CommSec.
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