Report
Industry Insights November End 2024
Younger Consumers Present Growth Opportunities for Hong Kong’s Lenders
Report highlights include:
- Revolving lines showed steady, continued year-over-year growth, driven by younger consumer participation
- Card utilisation increase driven by existing cardholders amidst a cautious lending environment
- Redefined lender risk strategies led to personal loan portfolio contraction and improved account-level delinquencies, creating opportunities for prudent future growth
Consumers in Hong Kong are increasingly choosing the value and convenience of revolving lines, mostly offered by digital banks responding to consumers’ needs, with demand throughout the year in 2024 trending well above the prior year levels. Enquiries for this product increased by 25.2% year-over-year (YoY) between September and November 2024, and revolving line origination volumes, a measure of new accounts opened, were up 76.4% YoY in the June to August 2024 quarter (the most recent available data due to reporting lag).¹
The Hong Kong credit card market saw higher spending from existing cardholders, influenced by macroeconomic factors such as moderate economic growth of 2.5% in 2024² and increase in travel related spend. This was reflected in the 1.4% increase in outstanding balances YoY in the three months ending November 2024, a 2.1% increase in the number of consumers with an active card account, and the 1.2% increase in the number of consumers carrying a balance over the same period. This occurred despite declines in local retail sales between June and August of between 10 and 12%.³
Summary of growth in unsecured lending products November end 2024
*Originations reported three months in arrears due to data lag and reflects June–August 2024 volumes. Balance growth reflects movement between November 2023 and November 2024 for year-over-year comparison.
“Lenders need to adopt advanced trended data and proactive identification of early risk signals to better manage their personal loans portfolio risk. Opportunities for prudent growth still exist and can be found by taking a more comprehensive trended view of consumer performance across all products in wallet.”
- Weihan Sun, principal of research and consulting for Asia Pacific at TransUnion
About the Hong Kong Industry Insights Report
TransUnion’s quarterly Hong Kong Industry Insights Report provides in-depth, statistical information drawn from its regional consumer credit database, aggregated across virtually every active credit file on record. Each file contains hundreds of credit variables that illustrate consumer credit usage and performance. Entities across industries can subscribe to and leverage the Industry Insights Report to analyse market dynamics throughout an entire business cycle, helping them understand consumer behaviour over time. The report looks at major consumer lending categories: credit cards, loan on cards, personal loans, revolving lines, mortgages, and auto loans, focusing primarily on three dimensions across these categories: originations (new accounts opened), balances (outstanding total and average lending balances) and delinquencies (accounts in payment arears).
¹ TransUnion's last Industry Insights Report for Hong Kong in 2024 is based on the final sets of credit data until end of November before the full migration to Credit Data Smart (CDS). Future reports will be based on data from the Credit Reference Platform under CDS.
² HKSAR Government: The 2025-26 Budget
³ C&SD: Provisional statistics of retail sales for December 2024 and whole year of 2024
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