Financial Market Statistics July 2010:

Interest rates continue to rise

The lending rates of Monetary Financial Institutions (MFIs) to households continue to rise in July. MFIs include banks and housing credit institutions. In July the average interest rate from MFIs for new loans to households was 2.56 percent. This is 0.17 percentage points higher than in June and 0.39 percentage points higher than in May.

The short-term interest rates accounted for a large part of the increase. The average interest rate for new loans to households with periods up to three months rose from 2.12 percent in June to 2.36 percent in July. The interest rate for loans with periods of over three months up to one year was 2.19 percent in July, compared to 2.01 percent in June.

The majority of the housing loans were still taken with floating rates, but the percentage with fixed rates is increasing. Of the new loans to households taken in July from housing credit institutions, 30.4 percent of the amount loaned was at a fixed interest rate, compared to 28.3 percent in June. This can be compared to the situation in July 2009 when only 10.9 percent of loans were at fixed rates.

MFIs' lending rates for new loans to non-financial corporations averaged 2.00 percent in July. Compared to June when the interest rate was 1.89 percent, this was also an increase.

Lower growth for lending to households

The growth rate on lending to households dropped somewhat compared to the previous month. At the end of July, the growth rate for MFIs lending to households was 8.8 percent, compared to 8.9 percent in June. In July 2009 the growth rate was 7.9 percent.

Households' loans from MFIs totalled SEK 2 440 billion at the end of June. Most of this was lending for housing loans, which amounted to SEK 1 639 billion. Meanwhile, households had consumption loans totalling SEK 153 billion. The growth rate for households' housing loans was 10.4 percent while it was 3.9 percent for consumption loans. 

Increased lending to non-financial corporations

Lending from MFIs to non-financial corporations amounted to SEK 1 704 billion at the end of July, an increase of roughly 5 billion compared to June. However, the annual growth rate is still negative. The rate in July was -1.8 percent, while in June it was -3.5 percent.

Higher growth rate for both M1 and M3

The growth rate for the narrow monetary aggregate, M1, was 7.6 percent in July. This is higher than in June when the growth rate was 6.6 percent.  In total, M1 amounted to SEK 1 637 billion.

The growth rate for the broad monetary aggregate, M3, increased from 2.2 percent in June to 5.4 percent in July. In July 2009 the growth rate for M3 was -1.4 percent. M3 amounted to SEK 2 243 billion in total.

M1 consists of the general public's holdings of bank notes and coins as well as demand deposits by the general public in MFIs and with the central government.  In addition to M1, M3 also includes deposits with certain conditions, repurchases, shares in money market funds, and short term securities.