This year, the growth rate of household loans at major commercial banks is expected to remain around 1%. The reason is the government's stronger stance on managing household debt. Real-demand buyers who planned to purchase dwellings with a mortgage loan this year are expected to face difficulties.
According to the financial sector on the 12th, the Financial Services Commission said in its "2026 household debt management plan" that it would curb this year's household loans growth rate to around 1.5% compared with the end of last year.
If the average target growth rate for this year at the five major banks—KB, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, and NH Nonghyup—is set at around 1%, the scale of household loans they can increase annually is estimated at about 6.4493 trillion won. This figure is based on the outstanding loan balance of household loans excluding policy loans of 644.9342 trillion won at the end of last year. The monthly increase comes to about 537.4 billion won, and the bank-by-bank average is limited to about 100 billion won.
In particular, some individual banks could see their household loans growth rate stay in the 0% range. Some banks are known to have agreed with the financial authorities to manage this year's annual household loans (excluding policy loans) growth rate at 0.7%.
At the beginning of this year, the five major financial holding companies planned to manage the household loans growth rate of their subsidiary banks at around 2%. However, under the financial authorities' household debt management measures, they now need to lower it to about half that level. Additional loan-suppression steps are expected to be unavoidable to meet targets going forward.