More and more people neglect paying their bills on time

One individual has more than 300 entries in the payment defaults register

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Last year the number of payment defaults grew in all age groups save among the under-20s, the credit information company Suomen Asiakastieto reports.
      In 2010, the number of people with payment disturbances grew by 13,000 compared to the year before.
      This translates to an increase of 4.3 per cent from 2009.
     
Asiakastieto has currently around 319,000 Finns in their registry.
      No less than 70 per cent of the current entries are new ones from last year.
      In all, Asiakastieto recorded 1.15 million new private citizens’ payment defaults in 2010.
      The number indicates an increase by 80 per cent, but this is primarily due to a Credit Information Act amendment that came into force at the beginning of April last year.
      Prior to that, bailiffs combined the same debtor’s recovery cases all together, whereas now each individual payment disturbance is entered into the database separately.
     
All told, the Asiakastieto registry dealing with private individuals’ payment defaults contains 2.7 million entries.
      This means that those in the database have neglected eight payments on average. The figure has doubled in the past five years.
      The group with the most neglected bills are the 25 to 29-year-olds. The over 65-year-olds have the fewest entries in the register.
      A typical payment disturbance candidate is a 20-24-year old male from a lower social class who likes to make purchases with his credit card and who is not afraid to take out instant loans.
      The registry’s “top dog” had 316 effective payment default entries, while another person had a distraint order for 244 outstanding bills.
     
”Even though the people who leave their bills unpaid are still most often young men, women are catching up”, explained Asiakastieto managing director Mikko Parjanne, when presenting the figures on Wednesday.
      Asiakastieto service director Risto Kallio reckoned that the number of payment defaults will increase this year by about ten per cent with private citizens and businesses alike.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Stories of bad debts gone worse leave ninth-graders with much to think about (27.5.2008)

See also:
  Majority of Finns unfamiliar with their credit card APR (3.11.2008)
  Finns in increasing numbers fall into consumer credit debt trap (19.1.2007)
  Failures to pay instant loans increasingly often lead to litigation (28.4.2008)

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