You asked us

"The Credit Action Debt Statistics were published on 3rd October. Any thoughts?" 

I have touched on these figures above. Whilst there are some encouraging signs, such as the total amount of credit card debt continues to fall and outstanding unsecured consumer credit was down £9bn at £156bn on the previous year, there are still causes for concern. 

Every 15 min 30 sec a property is repossessed and every 4 min 49 sec someone will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. 904,000 people had been unemployed for over a year between May and July 2012 and total outstanding personal debt stood at £1.412 trillion at the end of August which is up from £1.407 trillion last year. These are depressing figures. 

Clearly as a country we have some way to go to get out of this gloom and reach growth as suggested by Ernst and Young. There are still some tough times ahead. 

March 2012

Following the National Debt statistics mentioned last month, March has seen the publication of fraud loss figures. These have fallen to a ten year low on our debit and credit cards but telephone and cheque crime has increased. The figures show that online banking fraud has also fallen but that telephone banking and cheque fraud have risen 32% and 17% respectively.

Whilst people generally seem to be more aware of using anti virus software on their computers, malware and phising attacks have seen an 80% increase since 2010. Most telephone banking fraud losses are down to customers being duped with fake e-mails or cold calling scams encouraging them to divulge their personal information.