South Africans in debt review spend 57.8% of their pay servicing unsecured debt

South Africans applying for debt review are spending a median 57.8% of their net monthly income on unsecured debt repayments alone, according to the baseline reading of a new monthly index published by NCR-registered debt counselling practice Debt Solutions 4U.

The South African Financial Pressure Index (SAFPI) measures financial pressure among consumers already seeking debt relief. Its August 2026 baseline draws on 1,913 debt review applications, 7,393 individual credit accounts and 524 checks against the National Credit Regulator's debt review register.

The 57.8% figure excludes home loans and vehicle finance. It covers personal loans, credit cards and store accounts only. More than half of applicants, 54.9%, spend over half of what they earn servicing unsecured debt before a bond or a car repayment is considered.

Debt scales with income

The index found that higher earnings offer little protection. Every step up in income bracket brought a larger step up in unsecured debt.

The median applicant earns under R10,000 a month. Applicants earning R50,000 or more carried a median R329,692 in unsecured debt, though that figure rests on only 17 applications and the index reports it with the sample size attached.

Personal loans dominate

Splitting 7,393 unsecured accounts by credit type showed a single category driving the pressure. Personal loans made up 59.2% of all accounts and R61.4 million of the R99.6 million owed — 61.7% of the total balance, more than double the next category.

Credit cards were second at 24.6% of balance from only 14.5% of accounts. Store cards inverted that pattern: common at 12.9% of accounts but carrying just 5.6% of the money. Cellphone contracts appeared on 315 accounts and contributed under 1% of the balance.

“The number that matters is not the debt, it is the gap. When instalments consume more than half of what somebody earns, no amount of budgeting closes that. And it is rarely the store card that breaks a household. It is the personal loan taken to cover the other debts.”

— Rowan Breeds, Lead Debt Counsellor, Debt Solutions 4U (NCRDC2423)

Method, and what was left out

SAFPI differs from existing measures in cadence and source. Repayment figures come from account-level credit bureau data; income is declared by the applicant. The practice states both openly, noting that one half of the ratio is verified and the other is stated.

Two measures were removed before publication. A credit bureau field indicating debt review status returned a positive result on every record checked, which the practice traced to a technical fault rather than a finding about consumers, and dropped in favour of querying the NCR register directly. A repeat-applicant measure was held back because the underlying data does not yet span enough time for the figure to mean anything.

The index also carries a stated limitation: everyone in the dataset approached a debt counsellor, so it measures the depth of difficulty among people already in difficulty, not how widespread that difficulty is across South Africa.

SAFPI is published monthly on the first Tuesday, beginning September 2026. Figures may be cited with attribution.