Johannesburg - South African women account for half of the total number of consumers on the credit bureau, according to the latest Experian Consumer Default Index (CDIx) for Q2.
This means that in terms of being credit active, women are fairly represented in the credit economy, but from a credit exposure perspective, only R0.8 trillion out of the full R2.18 trillion in outstanding debt is associated with women.
Head of data insights at Experian, Ans Gerber, says women are disproportionately under-represented in secured loan products, both in terms of consumer numbers and market exposure.
Only 33% of home loans and 37% of vehicle loan exposure are being associated with women. Interestingly, however, the data shows that women constitute approximately two-thirds of the market for retail loans, both in terms of volume and value.
"This is the single credit product that is mostly used by South African women who are credit active," said Gerber.
According to the index, despite the under-representation in secured credit, the number of women in credit has shown a proportional increase in the last three years.
"This has been echoed for most of the individual credit products, except for personal loans, where women have seen a slight reduction in representation. Encouragingly, female representation for secured credit has increased meaningfully over the last three years, with home loan representation moving from 36.2% to 37.7% (+1.5%) and vehicle finance increasing from 41.3% to 43.3% (+2.0%)," according to the index.
Overall Market: Credit appetite remains high with decreasing approval rates.
According to Experian, from a gender perspective, historically, South African women have been in a more favourable position than their male counterparts, having a composite CDI that was consistently below the total composite CDI.
However, over the last six months, we have seen the women’s CDI moving closely to the composite CDI of the total market.
"Considering that many consumers are turning to credit to make up for the shortfalls in their cost-of-living expenditures, this trend also suggests that women are actively utilising their credit facilities to keep households afloat.
“To this end, we encourage all South Africans, women and men alike, to manage their budgets carefully and create strong financial disciplines," said Gerber.
The Star