\u201cThere are still 84,000 consumers who are 90 or more days behind on payments, most of whom are renters.<\/p>\n
\u201cRenters continue to be disproportionately represented, accounting for approximately 70,000 of these cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
The number of people more than 90 days behind fell by 5000 in June, compared with May.<\/p>\n
Mortgage arrears also dropped to their lowest level since December 2022, with 19,600 accounts reported as past due \u2013 an improvement of 15% year on year.<\/p>\n
However, new household lending lost momentum after a stronger start to 2026, falling 4.5% year on year during the June quarter.<\/p>\n
Lacey said property purchasers \u201chave become more cautious in response to rising interest rates\u201d.<\/p>\n
Last month, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) hiked the Official Cash Rate (OCR) from 2.25% to 2.50%.<\/p>\n
The Monetary Policy Committee said some further reduction in monetary stimulus would likely be required to return inflation to the 2% target mid-point. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the latest Centrix data also showed improvements in personal loan, buy now pay later (BNPL) and telco and communications arrears.<\/p>\n
Personal loan arrears improved to 8.7% of the active population in June and are now 6% lower than a year ago.<\/p>\n
BNPL arrears declined to 7.1% and are 15% below where they were at the same time last year.<\/p>\n
Telco and communications arrears improved to 7.2%, continuing the easing trend across mobile, broadband and subscription television accounts.<\/p>\n
However, retail energy arrears remained at 4.4%.<\/p>\n
\u201cLevels may increase during the remainder of winter as higher power bills place additional pressure on household budgets,\u201d Lacey said.<\/p>\n
Construction remains the largest contributor to liquidations, however, but the annual trend is beginning to ease. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n
Liquidations still rising<\/p>\n
Company liquidations rose 15% to 3073 in the 12 months to June 2026, according to Centrix.<\/p>\n
Construction remains the largest contributor, with 755 firms liquidated (0.9% of the sector) during the past year.<\/p>\n
However, the annual trend is beginning to ease, Centrix said.<\/p>\n
Hospitality recorded 419 liquidations in the past 12 months (1.3% of the sector), up 47% year on year.<\/p>\n
Retail trade liquidations increased 39% to 230 (0.5% of the sector). <\/p>\n
\u201cRising operating costs continue to place pressure on margins, particularly among food retail and hospitality businesses,\u201d Lacey said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere are still 84,000 consumers who are 90 or more days behind on payments, most of whom are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4057,138,82880,3105,219,15248,13989,1342,78,807,25449,33091,111,139,4061,69,1118,90,81743,418,165,61,1530],"class_list":["post-558087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-behind","tag-business","tag-centrix","tag-data","tag-economy","tag-falls","tag-fell","tag-five","tag-in","tag-kiwis","tag-level","tag-lowest","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-number","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-repayments","tag-shows","tag-their","tag-to","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}