In the past two years since the end of the crisis, about 113,000 customers have closed their deposit accounts in financial institutions.
All this represents a movement of the same magnitude as if the residents of Kecskemét, the eighth largest settlement in the country, unanimously stopped banking – Peter Gergely, financial expert at BiztosDöntés.hu, highlighted the decline in the number of clients. The decline was more common in 2022, when it did not make sense to maintain a deposit account due to high inflation. An easing of the monetary decline and a modest increase in bank interest rates have produced rising numbers in 2023.
Photo: Raiffeisen.hu
The majority of the decline came from the private sector, with the number of individuals holding 9.359 million deposit accounts at the end of last year falling by more than 102,000 compared to the previous two years. The expert added, according to a 24.hu news report, that the number of corporate deposit accounts decreased by 10,200 in the past two years to 925,000 by the end of 2023 compared to the levels of the end of 2021.
The crisis may have created a larger gap on the credit side than on deposits. Within two years, the number of lending customers fell by approximately 6%, or by more than 200,000. At the end of December 2023, there were 3.4 million credit accounts in banks, of which 3.157 million were residential credit contracts. The rate of decline has exceeded the population of the second largest local city, Debrecen – warned Peter Gergely According to News24.hu.
The decline in the number of loan holders of banks was almost exclusively limited to retail clients: compared to the end of 2021, Magyar Nemzeti Bank registered only 192 corporate loan agreements – their number barely exceeded 243 thousand.
Last year, retail lending declined significantly. In 2023, 43 percent fewer home loan contracts were signed than in 2022, there was a decrease in the number of open-use mortgage loan contracts by about 15 percent, and in Papavaro by more than 40 percent, which is not This can be offset by an increase of approximately 12 percent in the number of personal loan contracts compared to 2021.
Given the above, according to the expert, it is not surprising that the number of residential lending customers decreased by another 66,000 last year after a decrease of 144,000 in 2022 thanks to interim installments. However, in 2024, they expect loans to rise as well.
