Page 25 - Interface August Issue 2026
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Now ask who is carrying it. The So here is a different
comfortable assumption is that set of July resolutions,
credit distress lives at the margins drawn from what the
of the economy, among the reckless data actually shows.
or the desperate. The data says
otherwise. Of that unsecured book, For consumers: if you
R262.9 billion sits with consumers are behind, or about
earning between R20 000 and R40 to be, your highest
000 a month. Another R145.8 billion return financial move
sits with people earning more than this month is not a
R40 000. This is not the informal new savings product.
economy. These are teachers, It is getting current.
nurses, police officers, accountants Penalty interest,
and middle managers. People with collection fees and
payslips, debit orders, medical aid a damaged credit
and, on paper, room to breathe. record are among
the most expensive
The shape of the debt changes as items in personal
you move up the income ladder, but finance, and clearing
the pressure does not. Lower down, it arrears buys all of
is personal loans, R109 billion of them back at once.
them. Higher up, it is credit cards, at Phone your credit
R76.5 billion. The product differs. The provider before the
month end arithmetic is the same. second missed payment, not after the fourth. Hardship processes
exist, and they work far better early. And look at your credit
An arrears number is not like other report. Every South African is entitled to a free one from each
statistics. Nobody misses a payment bureau every year, and most people have never seen theirs.
casually. By the time a missed
instalment shows up in bureau data, For lenders: the growth of the book is outpacing the health of the
that household has usually already book. That is a business problem as much as a social one, and
cancelled the gym contract, skipped early intervention is cheaper than collection every single time.
the dentist, borrowed from a relative
and shuffled debit order dates And for the policymakers and campaigners behind Savings
for months. A default is the last Month: measure the right thing. A country’s savings rate tells you
domino to fall, not the first. Which about its past. The speed at which its households fall into arrears
means the surge we are recording tells you about its next 6 months. If overdue balances growing at
now describes budget failures that almost 80% a year does not qualify as an early warning, I am not
began quietly, some time ago, in sure what would.
homes that still look fine from the
outside. None of this makes the savings message wrong. A household
with 3 months of expenses put away is a household that never
This is why the standard Savings appears in my arrears data, and I would love nothing more than
Month conversation frustrates me. a quieter screen. But we will not get there by telling people to
We frame saving as a habit, a matter try harder. We will get there by noticing, honestly and early, how
of willpower and clever tips, and we many of them are already underwater, and by changing what we
measure the campaign by how many do about it.
savings accounts get opened in July.
Meanwhile the single most sensitive The numbers are talking. The question is whether anyone is
gauge of household financial health listening in July.
in this country, the speed at which
ordinary people are falling behind on Siva Dhever is Head of Data Science at XDS, Mettus.
what they already owe, is not tracked All figures are drawn from XDS credit bureau data as at June
publicly and barely discussed. 2026, aggregated and anonymised in compliance with POPIA.
INTERFACEDigimag | AUGUST 2026 | 23
