Something is late, very late this month. After the stock loans data from the RBA and APRA, both of which arrived for October on the last day of November, we would have expected to see the credit flow data from the ABS, about a week or so later.
Yet, digging into the upcoming releases, it looks like something will land on the 17th December. In addition, we are expecting significant revisions and changes as they continue to tweak the new reports.
They said:
From December 2019, this publication will be based on a new, improved data collection, called the Economic and Financial Statistics (EFS) collection. To better reflect the new content, the publication will be renamed Lending Indicators, Australia (cat. no. 5601.0). The first issue of the new publication will contain October 2019 data and will be released on 17 December 2019.
We know the October loan stock growth slowed to the lowest in many years, so the current theory doing the rounds is that households are repaying existing loans, and significant volumes of new loans are being written. Industry sources suggest to me that the refinance sector is buoyant thanks to the lower rates, but that is a net sum game. It is the new loans which we need to watch (after all if home prices are really taking off, per some of the indices, we would expect to see this trend), something which was pretty anemic last month.
And they also warn:
The changes to the concepts and classifications are significant. There is a high likelihood of revisions in future reporting periods as APRA, the ABS and the RBA continue to work with ADIs and other reporting institutions to ensure consistent reporting that aligns with instructions and definitions, and the impacts on seasonality can be measured. It is expected data quality will continue to improve over time.
