Benchmark for loan portfolio

These views are my own, not my employers.

Benchmarks are very difficult to obtain, and depends what you want to look at. If it's bad debts, there are so many classifications of default, charge-off, write-off, fortuitous recoveries, etc, that it makes Basel II a little bit of a joke in having true comparable Probability of Default or Loss Given Default estimates.

When I worked for Fair isaac International (FICO), they collated and sold credit card benchmark data on balances, exposure and defaults. Most credit card issuers in the UK paid for this data. If you've got £50k spare....

The P2PFA does have some definitions for default rates, and these are published by the varying members (for example RateSetter's are in the members area). However the members business models are very different, e.g. business/consumer, unsecured/secured, guarantees, varying interest rates, that comparables don't really mean much IMO.

For very high level, accurate industry, summary data the Bank of England's Interactive Statistical Database (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/newintermed.asp) is quite good. Although it doesn't break down into specific sub categories of credit (e.g. just secured, cards, loans). Reports I've been using lately to try and judge how bad things got in 2009 are:

    1.     Table C2.1 -    Write-offs of loans by banks and building societies (not seasonally adjusted)

    2.     LPQBI2P -       Quarterly amounts outstanding of total (excluding the Student Loans Company) net unsecured lending to individuals (not seasonally adjusted)