Newcastle Permanent customers spend $90M more on card in summer months compared to previous year

The latest Newcastle Permanent Customer Spend Trends Report shows how consumer trends changed from pre-pandemic times to now; with retail, grocery, home and food spending up, while airline and cruise travel, car hire, fuel and tourism expenditure were down.

The Perm's 320,000 customers spent an average of $7 million a day on their cards across December, January and February.

Related: Newcastle Permanent says customers spending big in spite of COVID-19

December 2020 recorded an overall increase in card and online spending of $40.8 million compared to December 2019. Year on year card purchases also surged by $23.7 million in January and $26.2 million in February.

"We've seen a real spending confidence among our customers at the start of 2021, driven by an economy emerging from recession, progress towards the COVID vaccine rollout, regional community management of the pandemic, a more cashless economy and historic low interest rates," Newcastle Permanent chief customer and product officer James Cudmore said.

Grocery spending in January was up 24 per cent on the year before, and was even almost $650,000 higher the COVID bulk buying period of April/May 2020.

Camper trailer purchases and hire doubled year on year for January, but domestic and international airline spending was down 78 per cent. Airline spending was also down $170,318 from November 2020, when there was a 10-fold increase in the category from the lockdown period of April/May.

Customers spent 24 per cent less on fuel this January compared to the same period in 2020 and transport expenditure fell 44 per cent.

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