UK credit-to-GDP trend (HP filter)
UK credit-to-GDP trend (HP filter) stood at 148.56 % of GDP in Q1 2026, according to Bank for International Settlements (BIS). It is one of the indicators in the Credit and debt burden table (Value · Quarterly), with a complete series running from Q1 1973 to Q1 2026. The complete series with an interactive chart, free to download.
This indicator in the Credit and debt burden table
| Indicator | Q1-2026 | Q4-2025 | Q3-2025 | Q2-2025 | Q1-2025 | Q4-2024 | Q3-2024 | Q2-2024 | Q1-2024 | Q4-2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credit-to-GDP gap | |||||||||||
| Credit-to-GDP trend (HP filter) | 148.56 | 150.15 | 151.64 | 153.17 | 154.79 | 156.37 | 157.71 | 159 | 160.3 | 161.62 | |
| Credit-to-GDP gap | -20.12 | -18.86 | -20.13 | -22.4 | -22.23 | -18.7 | -18.31 | -18.94 | -19.89 | -21.8 |
Understanding UK credit-to-GDP trend (HP filter)
Statistical smoothing isolates the slow-moving, long-term trajectory of the United Kingdom private non-financial sector borrowing ratio from its cyclical swings. Rather than tracking nominal debt stocks or the raw proportion of economic output absorbed by private obligations, this series applies a one-sided Hodrick-Prescott filter to the actual credit-to-GDP ratio. The calculation incorporates borrowing by households and non-financial businesses from all domestic and cross-border sources, whilst deliberately omitting public sector liabilities and intercompany financing between financial intermediaries. It functions as the time-varying benchmark against which the credit-to-GDP gap is derived, stripping out higher-frequency financial oscillations to estimate sustainable borrowing paths over multi-decade horizons.
Because the underlying actual ratio pairs quarterly debt stocks with cumulative output, short-term quarter-on-quarter changes in this baseline are negligible and offer little analytical value. Instead, analysts examine the gradual multi-year drift of the benchmark to assess whether structural debt capacity is shifting. A critical mechanical feature of one-sided recursive filtering is that newly incorporated quarters alter historical trend estimates through retrospective updating. Revisions in headline national accounts or extended benchmarks can cause the calculated path to adjust backwards. Furthermore, because this metric establishes a statistical central tendency rather than an absolute ceiling for solvency, matching it against cross-border equivalents requires caution whenever differing historical sample lengths influence the filter trajectory.
Frequently asked questions
- How is this filtered benchmark calculated?
- A one-sided Hodrick-Prescott filter is run recursively across the historical credit-to-GDP series, establishing a smooth long-term baseline using only information available up to each observation quarter.
- Why does this series exclude public borrowing?
- The metric concentrates exclusively on private non-financial corporate and household balance sheets to monitor private credit accumulation without distortions from sovereign debt issuance.
- Can past values of this trend line change over time?
- Yes, updates to underlying national accounts data or alterations to the historical time series can cause the recursive filter algorithm to revise previous trend estimates.