From Banking Day:
Borrowers with low-doc loans, who tend to be self-employed, may be experiencing a greater than the usual level of difficulty paying their loans.
Fitch Ratings said that delinquencies in the low-doc segment tend to be between two times and two and a half times those of full-doc loans.
In the year to March 2012 they were four times to four and a half times higher.
Fitch put the level of arrears of 30 days or more among those with low-doc loans at 7.08 per cent at the end of March, up from 6.62 per cent at the end of December 2011.
Home loan arrears grew more broadly, to 1.6 per cent, in March, from 1.57 per cent in December, Fitch said. The firm based its analysis on pools of securitised home loans.
Fitch said this rise over the first quarter of the calendar year was less than might be expected for the time of year and said recent cuts in interest rates had helped stem the rise in arrears.
