Insurance families increase financial savings by 3%

The financial savings (financial assets) accrued by Spanish families at the end of June 2016 stood at 1,980 billion euros, according to data from the Bank of Spain, a reduction of 1.5% in the first half of the year ( EUR 29.135 million). According to Inverco, the momentum of net investment in financial assets by households has been insufficient to offset the loss of value of the home portfolios after a half-year of adjustments in the financial markets.

The net acquisition of financial assets by households exceeded 5% of gross disposable income, with positive net inflows in almost all assets, although the highlights were investments in current accounts and demand deposits, at the expense of amortization of time deposits. By type of asset, both mutual funds and listed shares recover in the second quarter of the adjustment of the first months of the year, while the position of the homes in insurance registers a growth of more than 3% in 2016.

In annual terms, families continued to reduce their financial liabilities at a rate of -2.1%. However, the increase experienced by short-term loans in the quarter has led to a slight increase in the total volume of financial liabilities of households in the second quarter.

The financial wealth of households (assets minus liabilities) declines slightly in the first half of 2016 and stands at 1.2 trillion euros. In terms of percentage of GDP, the financial wealth of Spanish families reached 108.8%, compared to 65.0% in December 2008. The total wealth of households (financial plus real estate) stood at 521 % of GDP in March 2016 (latest available data) compared to 685% in June 2007 (historical high). During this period, Spanish households have increased their financial wealth by 16 percentage points of GDP, while their real estate wealth has experienced a drastic reduction of 180 percentage points of GDP (€ 1.7 trillion in loss of value of their real estate ).