Although there are more than 5 million people in the red, the Central Bank affirms that the rise in delinquencies is slowing

In its latest Report on banks, the entity highlighted that, despite the fact that the general rate of arrears in financing to the private sector rose to 7.3%, The pace of deterioration “began to moderate.”

The entity led by Santiago Bausili stressed that in recent months there has been a slowdown in the rate of increase in the non-performing ratio of credit destined for households. According to the Central Bank, this behavior is mainly due to the fact that the real growth of the irregular portfolio has been gradually tempering. That is to say, The default grows, but the speed of the damage is decreasing.

The household credit segment already chains 18 consecutive monthly increases. In October 2024, family defaults were only 2.5%. In just a year and a half, that value multiplied almost fivefold, reaching a percentage unprecedented since 2004, with the aggravating factor that this collapse occurred in a context where the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) remained at positive levels.

The increase in the level of arrears reached all types of banks, but was especially noticeable in loans to families. In that segment it grew 0.5 points in just one month, and 8.3 points compared to the fourth month of 2025. Regarding portfolio irregularity in companies, it increased 3.3% year-on-year.

Beyond all this official data, the consulting firm 1816 warned in its latest report about the severe “scarring” effect that this phenomenon will leave on the family economy. He maintains that Today there are 5.3 million people who have at least irregular creditwhich means that they have been unpaid for at least 90 days.

This will generate a central problem that has to do with the fact that millions of individuals will no longer be considered “credit subjects” for the formal system for a long time, which will function as a natural corset that will limit the expansion of loans in the immediate future, just when the Government is betting on the reactivation of consumption.

According to him, more than a quarter of the total universe of credit takers in the country (about 20 million people) today find themselves in an irregular financial situation, a liability that will take years to clear.

When breaking down the behavior of arrears by each type of financing, it is evident that the lines associated with daily and subsistence consumption were the ones that suffered the most from the impact of the crisis. Personal loans led the irregularity ranking, touching 14.9%, after registering an increase of 0.5 percentage points compared to March.

For their part, credit cards, which became the backup plastic for many families when it came to financing the basic basket, reached a delinquency level of 12.5%, recording the highest monthly variation in the report with an increase of 0.7 points in just thirty days.

The phenomenon of defaults also affected larger credit lines, although on a substantially smaller scale due to the guarantees that back them. Pledge loans, used mainly for the acquisition of vehicles, experienced a monthly increase of 0.3 percentage points, raising their irregularity rate to 7.3%. At the opposite end of the spectrum, mortgage loans once again proved to be the most resilient portfolio in the financial system, standing at a very low 1.5% in arrears despite having recorded a slight marginal increase of 0.1 point compared to the previous month.