Lending to companies by South Korea's non-bank financial institutions.... expanded five times faster than the respective amount those same institutions lent to homeowners in the first half of this year.
The Bank of Korea says.... non-bank corporate loans amounted to 1-hundred-32 billion U.S. dollars as of the end of June,... up 14-point-six billion dollars from the end of last year.
That's five times higher than the first-half increase of around two-point-nine billion dollars in non-bank household loans.
The central bank attributed the rapid growth.... to tighter government regulations on household lending,.... which prompted individual private operators to borrow money as under company names.