It’s a jungle out there when it comes to the household debt of Malaysians. Weeding through the credit card charges, property repayments, car leases, college loans and personal loans for weddings, businesses and a shinier pelt than the next tiger, we find families and individuals who cycle their bill-paying and use their half-dozen credit cards to pay off each other.

But what does Tiger care? Once upon a time, there were plenty of trees for Tiger to do his business under. Now the trees are replaced with concrete buildings. If Tiger is going to lose his home, he would damn well want the people living in those concrete blocks to enjoy them.

They don’t seem to be though. Last Tiger heard, the level of household debt in Malaysia was at a worrisome 140 percent debt-to-income ratio, with 56 percent of the debt being property loans (46.8 percent for residential properties, and 9.2 percent for non-residential properties). What is to be expected when even low-cost housing has a going rate of RM350,000 now?

So Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) steps in to save the day and the middle income consumers, limiting household loans to 35 years as opposed to 45 years previously. That’s still longer than a tiger’s lifespan, and a bit much if you ask any practical animal. Taking a loan for a house at 30 would require you to still be paying for it after retirement!

But the best part of this would be that analysts expect little to no impact from this ruling on the banks.

“First, we gather from various sources that average tenure for residential and non-residential loans currently stands at around 35 and 25 years. While some banks do stretch the repayment tenure up to 40 years, we understand from management that the proportion is minimal and  as such will not be expected to have any significant impact on the mortgage loan portfolio,” a report on the banking sector by Alliance noted.

What does this mean?

This means that there will be little impact on consumers as well. BNM is essentially enforcing a regulation that is rarely flouted as it is.

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This article was written by Samantha Joseph.