Over the past year, the stock of retail overdrafts began to grow and is already at HUF 250 billion, according to Bank360.hu‘s analysis. This means that more and more Hungarian bank account holders do not receive their salaries until the end of the month.
According to data from the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), there are approximately 6.7 million bank accounts available for primary payment purposes, which generate income on the basis of which an overdraft can be applied. The MNB does not provide data on the number of household bank accounts for which overdrafts were applied, but the current account balance of households has recently stabilized above HUF 250 billion, which means that the bank accounts show a deficit of this magnitude at the end of the month.
According to the analysis, projected onto an average bank account, the minus is almost HUF 40,000 (approx. 107.18 EUR) at the end of the month, but it is noted that the standard deviation is large, because many people do not have a credit line or do not use it, and others have a much larger debt. The analysis also reveals that HUF 30 billion in overdrafts disappeared from the accounts after the 13th monthly pension in February 2022, the sja refund and the weapon money, but they have been in the red since then.