http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/banks-in-denmark-face-tougher-credit-rules-to-tackle-record-debt.html
Denmark’s financial regulator is looking into the option of cracking down on banks’ lending policies to address the nation’s record household debt load.
“The subdued growth in consumption is related to the excessive debt-taking going on prior to the crisis,” Ulrik Noedgaard, director general of the Financial Supervisory Authority in Copenhagen, said in an interview. The FSA and the Danish Business Ministry are now considering “more directly regulating the credit policies” of mortgage banks, he said.
The new FSA regulations would come on top of soft limits on interest-only and adjustable-rate mortgages, which the Copenhagen-based agency plans to begin discussing with the industry next month, Noedgaard said.
Denmark is reining in its $550 billion home loan industry, the world’s biggest per capita, after cheap credit fed a borrowing spree. Danes owe their creditors 321 percent of disposable incomes, a world record and a level that warrants a policy response, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in November.
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