Consumer Pulse Wave 8

With lockdowns largely easing in the summer, we must keep in mind that the financial impact of COVID-19 remains very widely felt: as of 3 August, 56% of households still reported a negative financial impact. A silver lining is that consumers who have not yet been impacted by the crisis are now four times as likely to feel safe from any future fallout than they are to feel at risk of some unyet realized negative impact (in the first survey wave, those contrasting outlooks were almost equally expected).

And while the proportion of those financially impacted who fear they will be unable to pay their current loans and bills has been very stable since March (69% now versus 70% in survey wave one), the time to expected default continues to grow. Whereas only 42%of at-risk respondents gave themselves over a month before they missed a payment when we asked this question in the first week of lockdown, 60% now do (15% think they have at least three months before a missed payment manifests).

Twenty-three percent of households have taken some form of payment accommodation, but one in five of those were taken by households who were not financially impacted (13% by those not financially impacted and not expecting to be financially impacted in the future).