The Chile Financial Market Commission released its 2024 Indebtedness Report, reporting a further decline in the median debt of individuals to CLP 1.9 million as of June 2024 and a fall in over-indebtedness to 16.5 percent, the lowest level since 2021. The study analyses individual consumer and housing obligations using data submitted by CMF-supervised institutions and presents debt level, financial burden and leverage metrics using median distributions. The report estimates it covers 85 percent of household obligations in Chile and, for June 2024, puts the median financial burden at 13.6 percent of monthly income and median leverage at 2.3 times income. Over-indebtedness, defined as a financial burden above 50 percent of monthly income, declined from 19.1 percent to 16.5 percent, with 950,000 debtors identified as having a high financial burden, 83,000 fewer than in June 2023. Debtors in arrears of at least one day increased to 411,000 (7.1 percent of total debtors), while median unpaid debt fell by 3.5 percent in real terms. Consumer-loan median debt fell 13 percent year-on-year (consumer loans are 25 percent of total debt), while housing-loan median debt rose 2.7 percent (75 percent of total). The report also highlights differences by age, income, gender and region, including higher indebtedness indicators in Tarapacá, Antofagasta and Coquimbo. The CMF links the overall improvement in indicators to the observed decline in the monetary policy rate, higher real incomes, weaker loan growth (particularly consumer credit in banking) and changes in the composition of debtors. It also points to the planned implementation of the Consolidated Debt Registry, approved in July 2024, which it expects to narrow information gaps by expanding reporting entities and increasing reported household debt information by 8 percent.

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