Banking statistics for January 2026
Commentary of the Czech Banking Association on the development of deposits, loans and non-performing loans for December 2025 according to CNB statistics
The Czech Banking Association publishes a number of economic indicators in the CBA Monitor, including the main parameters of the development of loans and deposits in the domestic banking system. Thus, at https://www.cbamonitor.cz/kategorie/uvery-a-vklady you will find monthly updated selected data from banking statistics published by the Czech National Bank. We add a commentary to the figures to put them in context.
Banks enter the new year with growth
The Czech banking sector had a very good year last year and the January data suggest that the optimistic outlook could continue this year.
Households
Consumer loans
Total consumer credit (excluding overdrafts and credit card balances) reached CZK 372bn in January, up 0.7% month-on-month but a high +12% year-on-year. New business volume reached CZK 13bn in January, which combined with continued dynamic real wage growth supports household consumption as the main driver of economic growth. At 2.6%, it is the second best in the region after Poland and two percentage points above last year's estimated euro area average.
The share of bank consumer loans showing repayment difficulties ("non-performing", excluding overdrafts and credit card balances) rose to 4.11% month-on-month from 4.06% in December. Even so, this is the second best figure in the past year and a disproportionately more favourable figure than, for example, 10 years ago: the current trend is therefore very favourable.
According to the original CBA Hypomonitor data, banks and building societies granted new mortgages worth CZK 27.2 billion in January, which is CZK 1.4 billion less than in December last year, but a very solid year-on-year growth. With nothing to push mortgage rates down, they stagnated at 4.48%, with a year-on-year reduction of three-tenths of a percentage point, but with an increase in the average monthly repayment. This is due to an increase in the average mortgage size, which has already climbed above the four and a half million kroner (4.51m) mark.
In an attempt to curb price growth, the CNB has increased the LTV requirement to 30% of equity for mortgages for "investment apartments", but until April 2026, before the measure comes into force, the opposite effect on prices can be expected.
We cannot but reiterate that real improvement in Prague's most overheated market could only come from the eventual approval of the Metropolitan Master Plan, hopefully by June this year. The plan envisages space for the construction of up to 350,000 new flats, 70,000 of them in the "affordable housing" category, but no one knows when and how intensely the approval itself could affect the behaviour of market participants, the pace of housing construction starts, and, most importantly, dampen upward pressure on market prices.
Only 0.55% of mortgages experienced repayment difficulties lasting more than three months in December, classifying them as 'non-performing'. This is the same percentage as in the previous three months and an excellent value.
For loans made by banks to sole traders, the record line was broken, with the proportion of non-performing loans rising to 3.87% month-on-month compared to 3.78% at the end of last year, but this is still a silver medal, the second best monthly figure in a quarter of a century. Ten years ago, in the midst of the boom, the share of non-performing loans was roughly triple.
Non-financial sector companies
If we look at the evolution of corporate loan balances, we see a robust 1% month-on-month increase, or fourteen and a half billion crowns, to 1.517 trillion crowns, with a particularly strong 3 .4% month-on-month increase in medium-term loans with maturities between 1 and 5 years.
New loan production reached CZK 50 billion, of which CZK 28 billion were loans denominated in CZK. The difference between the total stock and the monthly production is due to the repayment of old loans. Interest rates on January's new koruna-denominated deals averaged 5%, while euro-denominated loans were at 4.1%.
Focus on manufacturing
The manufacturing industry, which still plays a quite crucial role in the Czech economy, showed very high year-on-year growth in January in terms of koruna loans, up +21.7%, while euro loans fell by 10.5%, so that the overall result was year-on-year stagnation. Interestingly, however, euro-denominated corporate loans grew faster month-on-month (+4.2%) than those denominated in koruna (+1.3%).
Encouragingly, even the manufacturing industries are not showing a deterioration in portfolio quality in aggregate, with January being the fourth best month ever in the last 25 years in terms of the share of non-performing loans, i.e. those with repayment difficulties lasting more than 90 days, at just under 4%. All figures below 4% were achieved in the past year.
The share of non-performing loans in the non-financial sector as a whole is even better, at just 2.4%, again another record and an excellent figure even by international comparison. Together with the still high level of corporate deposits (CZK 1.616 trillion), this suggests that "corporates" as a whole are very healthy.
Development of the main segments of the credit market (year-on-year, %)
Source: CNB, CBA Monitor
Deposits
The year-on-year growth rate of the population's deposits had gradually declined over the past two years, reaching a level of around 5% at the end of last summer, where it remained in January. It is noteworthy that compared to December, the rise in deposits was very high at CZK 47.6 billion, while the year-on-year increase in deposits reached CZK 187.6 billion. (The volume of assets under management of investment funds rose even more significantly, which indicates that the Czechs are gradually learning to put their money in riskier but more financially profitable products.)
The total nominal (not real) volume of deposits with more than CZK 3 trillion and eight hundred and eighty-two billion in January 2026 is an absolute record so far.
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As for non-financial corporates, here we record a month-on-month decline in deposits from 1.627 trillion to 1.616 trillion kronor. Corporations continue to have more deposits in banks than borrowings; the difference in January was around CZK 100 billion, while until 2020 the balance was always in favour of borrowings. Let us assume that over time, barring further external shocks, we will return to normality in this area too, with companies doing business, investing and working with credit, rather than saving and hoarding money in deposit accounts.
Development of deposits in the main segments (year-on-year, %)
Source: CNB, CBA Monitor
Chart: non-performing loans in the main segments (%)
Source: CNB, CBA Monitor
Share of non-performing loans in EU/EEA countries (%, Q3, 2025)