The demand for credit among immigrants over the course of 2013 represented an 11.0% share of the total applications to banks and financial institutions (compared to 11.9% in the previous year).
Moreover, access to credit represents a crucial part of the social inclusion of immigrants, which cannot be ignored in the planning and support of household consumption or the development of business activities. However, in such a difficult economic climate as the one we have seen over recent years, the weak labor market has hit the immigrant population particularly hard, with a significant increase in the risk of unemployment and a downturn in salaries, leading to a reduction in consumption and a lower propensity to invest in buying a home, with the resulting decrease in loan applications.
In order to analyze these current trends, the "
Report on demand for credit among immigrants", produced by CRIF on the basis of credit applications in Italy identified in its credit reporting system, shows how over the course of 2013, credit applications were registered from citizens originating from
219 countries.
Distribution of credit applications among non-Italian citizens
In 2013, more than a fifth of the credit applications made by immigrants were submitted by Romanians (with 21.1% of the total, compared to 21.6% in 2012), followed by Albanians (with 5.9% of the total) and Moroccans (5.4%). These are followed by applications by Germans, Filipinos and the Swiss (all close to 4%) and Peruvians (with 2.9% of the total).
The share of applications made by Moldavians, Ukrainians, Sri Lankans and Ecuadorians is between 2.8% and 2.4%, whereas for the Senegalese, Indians and Bangladeshis, the percentage is between 2.3% and 2.0% of the total.
The CRIF analysis highlights some unusual situations, such as the Chinese community, which in Italy ranks in 4th place in terms of the official number of residents with around 200,000. Meanwhile the Chinese are in just 29th place in terms of the number of credit applications, with 0.9% of the total, surpassed by countries such as Ecuador, Senegal and Tunisia, with communities of around 80,000 residents, but ranking in 11th, 12th and 16th places, respectively, in terms of credit applications. This confirms that the Chinese have a lower propensity to seek credit from the traditional banking system, preferring alternative forms of credit, mainly from their circle of friends or family, but in any case from within their own community.
At the opposite end of the scale, Germans and the Swiss, who represent a small proportion of the total number of immigrants (22nd and 44th places in the ranking by number of residents in Italy), have a marked propensity to apply for finance, ranked in 4th and 6th places in the overall classification, respectively.
The behavior of citizens coming from Sub-Saharan African countries also stands out in the analysis of the distribution of credit applications, except for the Senegalese, who show a significantly below-average propensity to apply for bank loans.
Distribution of demand by type of credit for the ethnicities applying for the most loansOverall, the demand for credit by non-Italian citizens demonstrates the desire to deal with a variety of types of expenditure, while there are some typical features for each ethnic group in terms of the mix of products being applied for, giving a decidedly complex and varied picture.
As a whole, comparing the distribution of credit applications by type of credit in 2013 by Italian citizens, there is a greater propensity by immigrants toward personal loans (40.3% compared to 28.4% of Italians), at the expense of retail finance (34.0% compared to 37.6%) and mortgages (3.2% compared to 5.0%).
Credit applications by average amount
The CRIF report also allows the average loan amount requested by citizens coming from other countries to be analyzed: among those that have registered a sufficiently significant number of applications, the highest amount is seen for Austrians with 36,524 Euro, followed by the Dutch (34,133 Euro), Chinese (24,179 Euro) and Russians (23,520 Euro).
Among the countries with a significant community in Italy and citizens who have a high propensity toward borrowing from credit institutions in 2013, the average amount requested by the Swiss was 15,708 Euro, meanwhile for Germans the average was 13,018 Euro. These are followed by Albanians, with 11,527 Euro, and Peruvians, with 8,823 Euro. Citizens coming from Romania, on the other hand, applied for on average 8,060 Euro compared to 7,468 Euro by Filipinos and 6,378 Euro by Moroccans.
"In recent years, the trend in credit applications by the immigrant population in Italy has also benefited from increasing confidence in the available financial instruments within our credit system", concluded Simone Capecchi, Director of Finance, Corporate Offer for Italy and Western Europe at CRIF. "What's more, in 2013 the demand for credit by citizens coming from other countries more or less followed the trends seen for Italian households, with a sort of self-restraint in an attempt to avoid over-borrowing in relation to disposable income, something which has led to a significant reduction in the propensity to seek credit from lenders to finance consumption or buy a home, and the deferring of expenditure to a more opportune time".
