The number of the week is 49.8%. That is the slice of Brazilian households' annual income now committed to debt in 2026, the highest level in the Central Bank's historical series. In practice, a family earning R$60,000 a year owes, on average, almost R$30,000.
The picture looks dissonant. Households' disposable income hit a record R$822 billion in May, and unemployment fell to 5.4%, close to an all-time low. Still, debt and defaults keep rising, according to the Central Bank.
Against this backdrop, the Central Bank said on Wednesday (26), in a statement from its Financial Stability Committee (Comef), that it is preparing measures to mitigate credit risk. The text points to the weight of the most expensive credit lines in household debt and says the goal is to "strengthen the sustainability of credit and the resilience of the financial system".
Two days earlier, at the opening of Febraban Tech, a banking industry event in São Paulo, Central Bank president Gabriel Galípolo had already said he is studying tools to curb household leverage, with "smooth and progressive" changes. He was blunt: "You cannot celebrate the news that credit grew and then complain that debt grew".
The bill lands in the consumer's pocket. Brazil has 96 million credit card users, 57% of the adult population, and 52.8 million of them pay interest on revolving balances (the part of the bill left unpaid) or on installments. The average revolving rate reaches 15.1% a month: someone who owes R$1,000 pays about R$151 in interest in a single month, the price of a week's grocery run.
Other credit lines are running even looser. Private payroll-deducted loans grew 145% in one year, to R$102 billion, and unsecured personal credit has jumped 188% since 2020, to R$397.2 billion, with rates of up to 149.5% a year. At that rate, a R$1,000 debt becomes almost R$2,500 in twelve months.
Understand
Macroprudential measures are Central Bank rules aimed at the financial system as a whole. In practice, the BC can force banks to keep more money parked with it (the reserve requirement known as compulsório), demand more capital for risky loans or make credit more expensive through taxes such as the IOF, a levy on financial transactions. The idea is to cool lending before defaults become a problem for the system.
It is the lack of detail that bothers the market. In a report, Swiss bank UBS says Galípolo's remarks add uncertainty to the banking sector, because it is unclear which tool will be used. UBS notes that credit to individuals is growing about 11% a year, a pace it does not see as excessive, and that reserve requirements sit near record lows, which would leave room for an increase.
The report cites the precedent of 2011, when the Central Bank raised capital requirements for longer-term loans and the government lifted the IOF on consumer credit from about 1.5% to 3% a year. Even while cautious, UBS kept buy recommendations on Nubank, Bradesco, Itaúsa and Inter.
The Central Bank tried to calm nerves. According to Comef, banks hold capital and liquidity above requirements, and "provisions for credit losses and liquidity and capital levels remain adequate". For the committee, the financial system is prepared for the materialization of credit risk.