Equifax 2024 Global Consumer Credit Trends

April 14, 2025 /Mpelembe Media/ — Equifax’s 2024 Global Consumer Credit Trends Report offers a broad analysis of consumer credit conditions across ten countries, leveraging the Equifax Cloud for enhanced data insights. The report highlights trends in consumer credit demand, debt, delinquencies, and credit card usage, alongside inflation trends.
Findings indicate a potentially slow recovery from high inflation globally, with regional variations in monetary policy responses. Specific examples from countries like Australia, India, and Spain illustrate diverse economic conditions and consumer credit market behaviours. The report aims to equip lenders with valuable information for better decision-making and faster innovation in the financial sector.

Equifax’s 2024 Global Consumer Credit Trends Report highlights several key consumer credit trends and inflation dynamics across the featured countries. The report, which draws insights from ten countries, is enabled by the Equifax Cloud and its custom data fabric.

Here are some of the key trends and dynamics highlighted:

Overall Recovery from High Inflation: The report suggests that the overall recovery from long periods of high inflation could be slow, with variations across different populations and geographies.

Monetary Policy Loosening: Most regions continued to loosen their monetary policies to help consumers manage tougher economic conditions.

Steady Global Consumer Credit Demand: Despite economic pressures, consumer credit demand mostly remained steady globally.

Shift Towards Unsecured Credit: Economic pressures continued to push consumers towards unsecured credit.

Controlled Return of the Mortgage Market: The mortgage market is showing signs of returning in a controlled manner.

Specifically, the report notes the following trends in some of the featured countries:

Australia: Experienced its first reduction in the cash rate in four years, prompted by the Consumer Price Index reaching its target rate for consecutive quarters.

India: Saw an increase in mortgage lending by 7% year-over-year due to rising urbanisation and better affordability, while non-mortgage debt increased significantly by 45% due to strong economic growth.

Spain: The Spanish economy ended 2024 as one of the healthiest in the Euro area, with a GDP growth of 0.8% quarter-over-quarter and 3.2% year-over-year. The European Central Bank further reduced interest rates in December 2024.

Canada: The overall mortgage market showed signs of recovery, with new mortgage originations rising by 39% year-over-year.

Argentina: Consumer credit demand continued on a positive trajectory, particularly towards the end of 2024.

Brazil: Credit demand remained stable in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter.

The report also includes specific inflation trends for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, India, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. However, the specific details of these inflation trends for each of these countries are not elaborated upon in the provided excerpts, other than the mention of Australia’s Consumer Price Index reaching its target rate.

The report aims to provide lenders with a deeper understanding of consumer credit demand, debt, delinquencies, credit card utilisation rates, and inflation trends to enable more informed decision-making and faster innovation.

The purpose of Equifax’s 2024 Global Consumer Credit Trends Report is to provide lenders worldwide with a deeper view into global consumer credit data and trends information from 10 different countries. This extensive look at consumer credit data and inflation trends is enabled by the Equifax Cloud and their custom data fabric. The report is designed to help lenders gain insights into overall consumer credit demand, debt, delinquencies, credit card utilisation rates, and inflation trends in their specific regions. The ultimate goal is to enable these lenders to make more informed decisions and innovate faster, which can lead to more mainstream financial opportunities for consumers. The report is also intended to provide a unique breadth of insights into these areas.

The Equifax Cloud infrastructure is a top-tier global technology and security infrastructure. It is backed by a multi-year investment of more than $1.5 billion. This investment allows Equifax to develop solutions that are faster, more reliable, more powerful, and more secure than before.

A central component of the Equifax Cloud is its custom data fabric. This is described as an adaptable data platform that performs the crucial function of unifying the enterprise’s data. This data comes from over 100 siloed data sources and is brought together in a single, virtual structure.

This unification through the custom data fabric enables critical data governance measures, including data segregation, and ensures compliance with regulatory requirements.

In essence, the key features of the Equifax Cloud are its:

Global reach.

High level of technology and security.

Significant financial backing.

Centralized custom data fabric that unifies disparate data sources.

Enhanced capabilities in terms of speed, reliability, power, and security of solutions.

Enablement of critical data governance and regulatory compliance.

The report highlights that this infrastructure enables Equifax to provide the kind of extensive look at consumer credit data and inflation trends from 10 different countries that is featured in their 2024 Global Consumer Credit Trends Report. This allows Equifax’s customers, such as lenders, to create more effective insights and innovate faster.

The 2024 Equifax Global Consumer Credit Trends Report indicates that most regions continued to loosen their monetary policies to help consumers cope with tougher economic headwinds. This suggests a general trend towards a more accommodative monetary stance across the featured countries in response to economic pressures.

The report provides a specific example of this in Australia, which experienced its first reduction in the cash rate in four years. This action was prompted by their Consumer Price Index reaching its target rate for consecutive quarters. While the report doesn’t detail the specific monetary policy actions for every featured country, the overarching trend highlighted is the loosening of monetary policy in most regions.

Furthermore, the report notes that in Spain, the European Central Bank reduced interest rates further in December 2024. This is another concrete example of the loosening monetary policy within the Euro area, impacting Spain. This action aligns with the general trend of monetary policy loosening observed in most regions during 2024, as mentioned in the report.