Financial Market Statistics, May 2008:

Household lending rates continue to rise

The Monetary Financial Institutes' (MFIs) lending rates for new loans to households continued to rise during May. The average rate was at 5.50 percent in May, which is a rise of 0.08 percentage points compared to April. The corresponding rate for this time last year was 4.58 percent.

The interest rate has gone up for all fixed periods except those loans with fixed rates between three months and a year, where the rate is unchanged at 5.18 percent.

The trend of rising rates for MFI loans to households with floating interest rates or a fixed period of up to three months appears to continue. The interest rate was at 5.53 percent in May, which was an increase of 0.03 percentage points compared to April. The rising rate trend has gone on since April 2007 when the rate was 4.44 percent.

The average interest on new loans from housing credit institutions to households was 5.31 percent in May, or 0.08 percentage points higher than in April. Fixed periods of a year and more had the biggest increase of 0.15 percentage points.

More households chose loans with floating interest rates from housing credit institutions in May compared to April. Of all the new loans from housing credit institutions to households in May, 56.7 percent had floating interest rates. The corresponding figure from April was 52.0 percent. So far this year 53.9 percent of loans have floating interest rates compared to 45.0 percent with floating rates in 2007.

Percentage distribution between new floating and fixed rate loans from housing credit institutions

Growth rate for household loans almost unchanged

The annual growth rate for all MFI loans to households was 10.8 percent in May, which was somewhat lower compared to April when the growth rate was 10.9 percent. This is a decrease by 1.0 percentage points compared to May 2007.

The total volume of MFI loans to households amounted to SEK 2 036 billion in May. SEK 1 315 billion of households outstanding loans were for housing while SEK 139 billion were for consumption.

M3 decrease in May

The growth rate in the broad monetary aggregate M3 amounted to 15.7 percent in May, which is a decrease of 2.2 percentage points compared to the growth rate in April. The decrease depends on a reduction of repurchases and Swedish MFI issued debt securities held by the Swedish public with periods of up to two years. M3 rose to SEK 2 084 billion.

The annual growth rate for the narrow monetary aggregate marginally increased from 6.0 percent in April to 6.1 percent in May. The total M1 volume amounted to SEK 1 397 billion.

Money supply

M1 consists of the public's holding of banknotes and coins as well as demand deposits by the public in MFIs and with the central government. M3 also includes, aside from M1, deposits with certain conditions, repurchases, shares in money market funds, and short term securities.

Definitions and explanations

Statistics Sweden compiles monthly financial market statistics on behalf of the Riksbank. These statistics are based on the MFI report. The MFI sector consists of banks, housing credit institutions, finance companies, institutions financed by municipalities and companies and monetary securities companies.

More about...

Information on the quality of the statistics, production methods and tables and diagrams can be found on Statistics Sweden's website.

Next publishing will be

The next press release in this series will be published on July 25 2008 at 09.30.

Producer Statistics Sweden, Financial Market Statistics Unit Box 24 300 104 51 Stockholm Fax +46 8 506 949 43	Enquiries Anders Nyberg Tel. +46 8 506 944 43 E-mail anders.nyberg@scb.se Jan-Olof Elldin Tel. +46 8 506 941 69 E-mail jan-olof.elldin@scb.se
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