There is good and bad news in the latest personal insolvency statistics from AFSA.
March quarter increase
The full March 2023 quarter numbers show an unfortunate increase of 12.6% over the same quarter in 2022 with a total of 2,494 new insolvencies recorded – and a 7.5% increase compared to the December quarter 2022. Quarterly personal insolvencies rose by 12.6% nationally (afsa.gov.au)
Of those 2,494 new insolvencies, 60.3% were bankruptcies [1,504] and 38.3% were debt agreements [954]. The remainder were personal insolvency agreements [33] and deceased estates [3]. Of the bankruptcies, 34.4% were business-related, rising from 29.9% in the March quarter 2022.
April monthly decrease
The good news is that personal insolvencies decreased in April 2023, to 769 from 921 in March. Provisional personal insolvency numbers decrease in April (afsa.gov.au)
Of these, 437 were bankruptcies, 320 were debt agreements, 11 were personal insolvency agreements and there was 1 deceased estate.
Debtors mainly came from health care and social assistance, construction and retail.
Of the bankruptcies, 175 people were also involved in a business, also down, from 193 in March.
Comment
In Personal insolvency statistics – March 2023 – beginnings of an increase? – Murrays Legal, we said it is too early to tell whether the small increase in the March figures gave some support to AFSA’s prediction of a rise in numbers of personal insolvencies towards 2019 levels within the next two years. AFSA forecasts personal insolvency numbers to rise | That view remains noting that the 769 insolvencies in April 2023 compare with the 2,736 personal insolvencies in July 2019.
