The outstanding volume of foreign currency loans (FX lending) to private households fell by € 370 million or -4.6% adjusted for exchange rate effects in the second quarter of 2023. Outstanding volume has therefore fallen by € 1.49 bn or -15.9% in the last year. As of 30 June 2023, there was still however € 7.91 billion outstanding in foreign currency loans. Since the imposing of the ban on granting of new foreign currency loans in Autumn 2008, the outstanding volume has fallen by € 41.14 billion or -86.2%. The share of foreign currency loans at the end of the 2nd quarter 2023 as a proportion of all outstanding household loans fell to a mere 4.4% during Q2 2023, a 0.63 percentage point decrease year-on-year. At the height of the foreign currency loan boom in 2006, this share stood at 31.8%. These were the findings from the FMA’s Foreign Currency Loan Survey for the second quarter of 2023.
98.2% of the foreign currency loans that were outstanding during the 2nd quarter were denominated in Swiss francs (the remainder is almost entirely denominated in Japanese yen), with the exchange rate during this period floating around 0.9788. The Swiss franc has appreciated by 68.9% since the start of 2008.
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Klaus Grubelnik
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