Budapest, 16 September 2025 — Household lending continued to pick up in 2025 Q2, with credit institutions’ household loans outstanding expanding at a year-on-year rate of 11.7 per cent. According to the MNB’s Lending Survey, banks expect the upturn in demand for housing loans seen during the quarter to intensify in 2025 H2, due to the Home Start loan programme. According to the banks' responses, corporate loan demand decreased in the second quarter, while they experienced an upturn in the financing of housing projects, and thus the credit institutions’ corporate loans outstanding continued to expand at a moderate rate in June, by 2.0 per cent year-on-year. In order to strengthen corporate lending, the MNB launched the Certified Corporate Loan (CCL) certification.
The credit institution sector’s household loans outstanding increased by HUF 394 billion in 2025 Q2 as a result of disbursements and repayments, boosting the annual growth rate to 11.7 per cent from 10.9 per cent at the end of the previous quarter. Domestic credit growth ranked fifth in the EU at the end of June 2025, significantly exceeding the average growth rate for the Visegrád countries (4.9 per cent).
The volume of new household loan contracts amounted to HUF 886 billion in 2025 Q2, up 21 per cent versus the same period of the previous year. In the case of housing loans, disbursement increased 13 per cent year on year, while personal loans rose 34 per cent. The expansion of personal loan disbursement was supported by pre-approved loans readily accessible online, the growing proportion of usage for housing purposes, top-ups and the higher contract sizes available. Within the framework of the Subsidised Loans for Workers programme launched in January 2025, more than 12,000 contracts worth approximately HUF 48 billion were concluded in the second quarter, accounting for 5 per cent of total lending.
In 2025 Q2, banks provided market-based housing loans at an average interest rate of 6.5 per cent (APR: 6.8 per cent), which was unchanged from the previous quarter; taking into account state-subsidised schemes, the average client interest rate payable by new borrowers was 5.7 per cent.
Based on the responses to the MNB’s Lending Survey, one-fifth of the banks tightened their standards for both housing loans and consumer loans in 2025 Q2, primarily by raising spreads. In 2025 H2, the banks expect to leave their housing lending standards unchanged, in order to keep up with housing market trends and grow their market share. In 2025 Q2, one-third of the banks saw rising demand for credit in the housing loan market, but looking ahead more than two-thirds expect demand to accelerate further, due to the Home Start loan programme. In the second quarter, 24 per cent of the institutions surveyed reported a further increase in demand for consumer loans, while 13 per cent of the banks only expect demand for home equity loans to strengthen in the next half-year period.
Credit institutions’ loans outstanding to non-financial corporations increased by HUF 315 billion in 2025 Q2, bringing the annual growth rate to 2.0 per cent at the end of June, in line with the previous quarter. The loans outstanding of the SME sector grew 2.4 per cent year on year. The growth rate of the domestic corporate loan portfolio ranks in the middle of the EU range, slightly above the EU average, but below the 7-percent average of the Visegrad countries.
In 2025 Q2, the volume of new, non-overdraft forms of credit to the corporate sector amounted to HUF 1,456 billion, exceeding the volume disbursed in the same period of the previous year by 36 per cent. The robust expansion in new disbursements during the quarter was driven strongly by large individual transactions and contracts concluded under the Demján Sándor Programme. The share of subsidised corporate loans in new contracts was 19 per cent in the quarter, exceeding the 15-percent share recorded in the previous year. The proportion of subsidised loans in the SME segment was 32 per cent in the period under review, compared to 25 per cent in the past year.
The average spread on newly originated forint loans with up to 1-year initial rate fixation, concluded with companies largely on a market basis, increased by 0.3 percentage point compared to the previous quarter in the case of small-amount loans, and thus reached 2.3 percentage points in the quarter, bringing the average interest rate on these loans to 8.8 per cent in the quarter. For large-amount forint loans, the interest rate remained unchanged at 8.3 per cent.
The banks participating in the Lending Survey left their standards on corporate loans unchanged in the second quarter and do not plan to change them in the next six months. A net 11 per cent of the banks eased their terms on commercial real estate loans, but plan to tighten them in this segment going forward due to the challenges in the office market. 30 per cent of the banks surveyed reported a drop in corporate loan demand in 2025 Q2, with the decline mainly affecting forint loans and long-term loans. Banks do not expect growth in corporate loan demand in the second half of the year either. However, 44 per cent of the respondents saw a pick-up in demand for loans to finance housing projects in the second quarter, which could strengthen further thanks to improving sentiment in real estate investment.
In response to the subdued corporate lending growth and in order to strengthen competition in the banking system, the MNB launched the Certified Corporate Loan (CCL) certification. The aim of the scheme, established following an agreement between the MNB and the Hungarian Banking Association, is to make investment loans available to a wide range of SMEs on market terms, with uniform and transparent conditions, quick and easy administration, and favourable pricing. Based on the detailed application conditions, credit institutions may request certification of their products from 1 August 2025. Following evaluation of the applications, Certified Corporate Loans are already available to businesses in the branches of 3 banks.