Money supply....

Welcome news from UK Money Supply growth

Posted on January 30, 2019

Today brings UK credit growth especially unsecured credit growth and the Bank of England into focus so let me open with the market view on interest-rate prospects.

Interest rate swap markets have cut expectations of a quarter-point rate hike from the Bank of England by the end of 2019 to 52 percent on Wednesday, compared to a previous 64 percent expectation.

The latest leg down in market expectations of a rate hike comes after overnight political developments that has sown fresh uncertainty for the British economy in the near term. ( Reuters)

Personally I find that rather odd as I think a cut is about as likely as a rise. Indeed with slowing world economic growth in ordinary circumstances people would be looking for a cut. I can understand those who think that in a disorderly Brexit the Bank of England might be forced to raise interest-rates to defend the value of the UK Pound £. But the catch is that when the Pound fell after the EU Leave vote Governor Carney and his colleagues decided to cut rather than raise Bank Rate. So it would require a collapse in the Pound for the Bank of England to raise rates.

Money Supply and Credit

These are hot topics on two counts. Firstly slowing money supply growth proved to be a reliable indicator of weak economic growth in 2018 and secondly soaring unsecured credit growth showed vulnerabilities in the UK economic structure.

So we first observe a welcome move.

The total amount of money held by the UK private sector (broad money or M4ex) increased by £11.5 billion in December. Within this, money held by households increased £5.5 billion, significantly above the £3.2 billion average over the past six months. This increase was driven by deposits in interest-bearing instant access savings accounts. Money held by UK private non-financial corporations (PNFCs) increased £1.5 billion, in line with the recent average.

This means that the annual rate of growth has risen from 2.2% to 2.5%. This is still weak but a more hopeful sign emerges if we look at the latest three months because they show an annualised rate of growth of 4.3%.

If we switch to a lending side style analysis we see this.

Households borrowed £4.1 billion secured against property in December, slightly above the average of the previous six-months……The amount businesses’ borrowed from UK banks………. Borrowing from banks remained robust in December at £2.3 billion.

If we add in unsecured credit and the other components we see that lending growth rose to 3.7% from the recent nadir of 3.1% in September.

Unsecured Credit

Here are the numbers.

The extra amount borrowed by consumers to buy goods and services fell to £0.7 billion in December . Within this, credit card borrowing was particularly weak at only £0.1 billion, compared to an average of £0.3 billion since July. The overall consumer credit monthly flow was slightly below the £0.9 billion monthly average since July, and significantly below the average between January 2016 and June 2018 of £1.5 billion.

We need to take care with phrases like “particularly weak” as credit card borrowing has been on something of a tear in the UK meaning that at £72.2 billion it is 7.1% higher than a year ago. Perhaps Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden wrote that but as he of course described 8.3% growth as “weak” not so long ago.

The annual growth rate of consumer credit has been slowing gradually since its peak of 10.9% in November 2016, falling further to 6.6% in December.

So we have a nuanced view here which is threefold. Firstly it is welcome to see a decline in the rate of growth. A catch though is that this rate of growth is on inflated levels and is still far higher than other numbers in the UK economy at around quadruple the rate of economic growth and double wage growth. Lastly the peak of November 2016 suggests it was puffed up by the “Sledgehammer QE” and Bank Rate cut of August 2016 a subject the Bank of England would rather not discuss.

Comment

There is a fair bit to consider here but let us start with a welcome improvement in the UK money supply trajectory.  I realise this is against the rhetoric we hear from elsewhere but the numbers are what they are. At a time when the world outlook is weak we need to grab every silver lining. The situation is more complex with unsecured credit because whilst the annual rate of growth is slowing some of that is due to it being on a larger amount ( £215.6 billion). Also some of it is due to a slowing of car loans as we see that sector slow due to technical reasons such as the diesel debacle. According to the UK Finance & Leasing Association car finance had 0% growth in November as falls in new car finance were offset by higher used car finance. This is at a time where we continue to pivot towards a rental/lease model as opposed to an outright purchase one.

The percentage of private new car sales financed by FLA members through the POS was 91.2% in the twelve months to November.

Let me end with some good news and a compliment for Governor Mark Carney. It comes from a disappointingly downbeat comment from Katie Martin of the Financial Times.

There’s more trade in the renminbi in London than there is in the euro vs sterling, which is weird/interesting.

Actually that is good news and confirms a conversation I had a while back with one of the managers of the Chinese state body in the City. It is an area of strength for the UK economy and I believe the Bank of England has supported this. Not all areas of banking are bad just some