Bank analysis suggests that such reductions in the spread over the risk-free rate played an important role in raising credit growth relative to GDP during both of the surges in the credit to GDP ratio since 1980.8 The spread over the risk free rate appears to have fallen due to three main factors – improvements in “intermediation technology”, greater risk appetite by banks, and greater access by banks to wholesale funding.9 How long should we expect these factors to exert downward pressure on the spread over the risk-free rate? Reductions in the business cost of intermediation pushed down on rates and up on credit growth relative to GDP during the financial liberalisation of the 1980s. They continued to have an effect, though to a lesser extent, during the 2000s. Such reductions will almost certainly be long lasting. The underlying drivers such as technological innovation in information gathering and rising competition are unlikely to go into reverse. Indeed, we might expect technology and competition to drive intermediation costs down further. The other factors that pushed down the spread over the risk-free rate in the upswing have proved to be much less sustainable. The increase in banks’ willingness to take risks and in investors’ willingness to provide wholesale funding both unwound sharply in the crisis. This is likely to have been one factor behind the fall in credit to GDP. Following the post-crisis repair phase, banks’ risk taking and lending spreads now appear to be at a more standard level.
In the 10 years between 1997 and 2007, the annualised growth rate of real credit was 7%, relative to real GDP growth of 3%. That meant credit grew at more than double the rate of the economy over the period. Had this trend continued the stock of credit would have been 200% of GDP by 2012 and 300% of GDP by 2023. The great recession that followed the financial crisis saw a sharp correction. Credit went into reverse, shrinking annually by around 2.5% a year in real terms from 2010–2014. By 2014 the stock of credit had dropped from its peak of 177% of GDP to 140% – and remains around that level. To put it in context, we are now back to where we were in 2002. Credit to GDP would have to fall another 25 percentage points to get back to 1997. Credit, of course, is another way of saying debt. As most of the lending during the long period of pre-crisis credit growth was to UK households, the stock of UK households’ debt relative to their income not surprisingly follows a similar path to the stock of credit to GDP. In 1964, it was 54% and remained around this level until 1980; but by 1990 it had exceeded 100%. It surged again from the late 1990s – by 2007 it had grown to 155%. It fell to 135%, its 2004 level, in 2012 and remains around there.