KPF-IRG BAROMETER

Every quarter since 2006 KPF conducts research titled „The situation of the consumer finance market” . It has been initiated as a common activity of the Research Institute for Economic Development (RIED) of the Warsaw School of Economics and KPF. The cooperation is based on conducting regular research meant to diagnose and predict the situation of the Polish consumer finance market. It has been designed as an independent part of a larger research project – Condition of Polish Households Research conducted by RIED since 1990. This research remains the basis for the common project.

Since 1996 the RIED research is based on a harmonised European questionnaire which includes questions on:

• the financial condition of a given household,
  
• general economic situation of a country,
  
• prices of goods,
  
• employment situation,
  
• durable goods market situation,
  
• savings.

The joint effort has lead to creating a index called the CONSUMER FINANCE MARKET BAROMETER (KPF-IRG BAROMETER). It is designed to show current trends and dynamics of Polish households’ indebtedness and to predict short term credit market tendencies. The reference variable used to construct the barometer and to describe the consumer finance market dynamics is the level of household debt (credit and loans) published on a monthly basis by the Polish central bank.
The research also uses questions aimed at diagnosing and predicting the households' behaviour on the credit market. The questions concern planned expenses, current level of indebtedness, current debt servicing, perceived barriers for incurring new debt and problems with paying back debt. Since the first quarter of 2008 the questionnaire includes questions about credit card usage which are asked on every odd quarter.