Credit cards getting cleared

Get straight to the good stuff every day with the Multiply Minute; a lightning-quick round-up of the money news and how it affects you.

Record debt repayments

We made record repayments on credit cards and personal loans in April. A whopping £7.4 billion was repaid in total - a typical month is £300 million. Many people have been spending less in lockdown and are using the spare cash to get back into the black.

Adviser comment: From a financial planning perspective this is great news and frees up money to help people focus on other goals.  

Mortgage approvals drop

Just 15,800 households were offered a mortgage in April. That’s a record low, and 80% less than in February. How come? A property valuation is essential to getting a mortgage, but surveyors weren’t able to get into properties because of lockdown restrictions. The rules have changed since then and lenders have started lending again.

Shop like it’s 2006

Retail prices slid 2.4% last month, the biggest monthly drop in the last 14 years. Shops are offering bigger and bigger discounts to try and tempt customers through their virtual doors. Clothes and furniture saw the biggest price drop, while food prices went up 1.5%.

Nissan’s out if there’s no deal

Nissan boss Ashwani Gupta said its Sunderland factory would be unsustainable if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. It’s the UK’s largest car manufacturing plant and employs around 7,000 people. His warning comes as Brexit talks resume this week.

Zoom boom

The video calling app that’s the mainstay of our lockdown work and social lives has (unsurprisingly) seen its user numbers boom. Over 300 million people used Zoom each day at its peak in April, and the number of paying customers has tripled. And that’s despite its decision to lift the limits on its free service so we can all call for longer than 45 mins at a time.

Adviser comment: In business it’s likely that video-calling will be used more.Only time will tell whether or not we’ll continue to use it socially, but I suspect that we will. My kids say they’ve been using video-apps for years, so maybe many of us are just catching up with the youth!