Index reveals business health levels in the South African economy
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The lowering of lockdown restrictions helped ease the pace of decline in businesses’ health, according to new insight from Experian South Africa.
Experian’s quarterly Business Debt Index (BDI) for quarter four (Q4) 2020 reflects the level of health of businesses in the economy, which has continued to improve as restrictions ease. The BDI improved for a second consecutive quarter in Q4 of 2020, to -0.864, from -1.401 in Q3 and a heavy depressed -3.727 in Q2.
Jaco van Jaarsveldt, chief decision analytics officer at Experian Africa said the economy was already in recession before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. This is reflected in the negative readings for the second half of 2019 and Q1 of 2020.
Apr 8, 2021
The easing of lockdown restrictions helped ease the pace of decline in businesses’ health, according to new insight from Experian South Africa.
Experian’s quarterly Business Debt Index (BDI) for quarter four (Q4) 2020 reflects the level of health of businesses in the economy, which has continued to improve as restrictions ease. As predicted, the BDI improved for a second consecutive quarter in Q4 of 2020, to -0.864, from -1.401 in Q3 and a heavy depressed -3.727 in Q2.
Jaco van Jaarsveldt, Chief Decision Analytics Officer at Experian Africa says the economy was already in recession before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. This is reflected in the negative readings for the second half of 2019 and Q1 of 2020.
Wealthy South Africans are falling behind on their home and car loans – here’s what they are paying
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Credit bureau Experian has published new data showing how the pandemic and lockdown has impacted affluent South Africans.
The group said that while the lockdown impacted poorer South Africans initially, its Consumer Default Index (CDI) shows that wealthier South Africans are no longer immune to financial struggles.
The Experian Consumer Default Index (CDI) is designed to measure the rolling default behaviour of South African consumers with home loan, vehicle loan, personal loan, credit card and retail loan accounts.
The index looks at six macro Financial Affluence Segmentation (FAS) in analysing its data:
Dec 22, 2020
Experian South Africa’s latest Business Default Index (BDI) improved sharply in Q3 rising from its extremely depressed level of -3.728 in Q2, to -1.402 in Q3.
According to Jaco van Jaarsveldt, chief decision analytics officer at Experian Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on economic activity as a result of the lockdown, played a significant role in bringing about a deterioration in the BDI in previous quarters, but by Q3, far more business activity was being conducted than in Q2.
“During Q2, both international and domestic economies were heavily locked down in an effort to quell the spread of COVID-19. This meant that many sectors saw activity declining by between 50% and 100% through the course of April specifically. From May onwards, some of the lockdown restrictions gradually came to be lifted, which benefitted Q3 greatly.