The institute for financial services (iff) with support from the Nuremberg based charitable foundation “Deutschland im Plus” has published its iff Over-indebtedness report 2011 in Germany this week. Key findings of the 2011 edition are:

- Rise in personal insolvencies in 2010, turn in trend for 2011
- “Irresponsible consumption” at its lowest level since 2005
- Deterioration in the level of education and vocational training
- Over-indebtedness process lasts 15 years
- Significant decline in the average amount of outstanding debt to 27,132 euros
- Increasing number of private debts to the public sector
- Single parents still remain the most vulnerable
- Over-indebted households have predominantly low incomes and a lack of assets
- Slight improvement in unbanked households

First published in 2007, the 2011 edition is based on the examination of data from more than 13,000 households collected from individuals having sought debt advice starting in 2006 until 2011. The evaluation of the data, made anonymous, is based on collected information from nine debt advice centres located in five federal states. The data are process-generated, meaning that they have been assembled and produced from the debt advisory process, with debt advisors capturing data during the consultation with the client using the iff specialist debt advice software CAWIN. iff has subsequently documented, summarised, and presented the statistical analysis, which overwhelmingly covers private individuals that are not over-indebted from selfemployed, although one in ten cases does involve a household where a former entrepreneur saw his business venture fail.

The “iff-Überschuldungsreport 2011” (iff Over-indebtedness report 2011) and an abstract in English are available for download, free of charge on iff-ueberschuldungsreport.de.