EFMA and IHS Global Insight join forces to provide in-depth analysis of consumer finance markets.

A pan-European study about equity-release schemes.

Key insights about the supply of, and demand for, loans to households in the USA.

The 2008 Study of Consumer Payment Preferences, a primary research project conducted by BAI Research and Hitachi Consulting, is designed to track the evolution of the consumer payments landscape and to monitor and understand consumer payments behaviour across three primary payment venues: In-Store, Internet and Bill Payment.

For more information about the full study, please click here.

The UK Competition Commission is currently investigating the domestic market for Payment Protection Insurance. The provisional report of the investigation provides extremely detailed market intelligence on the British PPI industry.

The economic outlook for Eastern Europe deteriorated rapidly over the last few months.

The European Commission Internal Market and Services Directorate General in December 2007 engaged London Economics to undertake a study on the role and regulation of non-credit institutions in EU residential mortgage markets.

In relation to the household lending market, the results of the survey indicated that banks' willingness to lend increased both in respect of housing loans and consumer loans in 2008 H1. In the last half year, credit brokers' role in sales activity and in the process of replacing loans with new loans continued to become increasingly important. Price terms of loans (fees, spreads over funding costs) were eased further. Interest rates of households' credits increased, but the increase is not reached the level of increase in funding costs. Some of the responding banks moved to tighten their non-price loan terms, although the summarily slight easing was observable on the market. The fierce competition experienced in the banking sector continues to be a motivation to ease conditions, but the banks envisage tightening steps in H2 2008, mainly due to the cost increase and shortening in funding and deterioration in customers' creditworthiness. The appreciation of the forint in 2008 Q2 did not lead to customers shifting away from foreign currency loans, and at the same time it encouraged more active prepayment of foreign currency loans which had been taken out at a weaker exchange rate.

Size matters...

...as deposits move into the spotlight

Though CEE remains a highly dynamic region with outstanding prospects for growth and prosperity in the years to come, the tremendously high growth rates of the banking markets in the recent years are coming back to more moderate and sustainable levels. While banking asset and loan growth remained very strong overall in 2007, defying the impact of the US subprime mortgage crisis on the availability and pricing of external funding for the most part, the contagion of the crisis to other parts of the financial market and the global economy, as well as its extended duration, do have left their marks on the banking sector development in CEE in the first half of 2008.

Santander Consumer Finance is set on a strong geographical expansion path, both in mature markets (Western Europe, the USA) and in dynamic ones (Eastern Europe). At the same time, its strong reliance on car finance prompts the company to diversify its product portfolio, in order to mitigate the ebbs and flows of the car market.

The purpose of this report is to draw a marketing profile of the company, i.e.:

a/ to describe and analyze its marketing mix strategy (breadth and depth of the product spectrum, distribution channels)

b/ to quantify key aspects of its activity (breakdown of the loan portfolio by product type, market share)