Fewer Hungarians manage their finances compared to last year, new research shows

The research, commissioned by International Personal Finance (IPF), the parent company of Provident Financial Zrt., surveyed 1,000 people. The Provident Financial Wellbeing 2025 Report aims to annually map how respondents view their financial situation and what factors influence their financial decisions.

Fewer Hungarians are managing their finances compared to a year ago, as indicated by the fact that while 53.4% of respondents in Provident's 2024 survey said they hadn't taken out loans in the previous twelve months, in the 2025 survey, non-borrowers became a minority at 49.9%. However, Hungary performs well internationally, as the proportion of debt-free Hungarians remains higher than the average of the nine surveyed countries, which is now 44.6% (down from 45.7% in 2024). Only Poland had a better rate (58.6%), while Mexico (36.9%), Romania (38.1%), and Latvia (38.5%) had lower proportions of people living without loans.

The research shows that when Hungarians need to borrow money due to running out of funds at the end of the month and having no savings, they still primarily turn to family members - younger people to their parents, while older ones to their children. Hungarians do this more actively (27.6%) compared to the nine-country average of 25.8%. Estonians (31.6%) and Romanians (31.3%) are most likely to seek family financial help, while Mexicans (21.0%) and Poles (20.3%) are least likely.

Hungarian women were more likely to seek financial help from family members in the past year, with an increase from 31.6% to 31.8%, while men's rate decreased from 25.1% to 23.2%. Men seemed to prefer financial institutions more - possibly due to slightly lower interest rates - with 14% seeking loans compared to 11.6% a year ago. In contrast, women's use of financial institutions decreased from 15.9% to 10%, bringing the national average down from 13.8% to 12%.

This puts Hungary in second place out of the nine countries surveyed, ahead of only Lithuania, where only 10.9% of respondents had applied for a loan from a financial institution. In this comparison, the differences between countries are greater, with Mexico at the other end of the list with 39.1%, followed by Australia with 28.7% and Latvia with 24.6%. But in the other three countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the demand for credit from financial institutions is also much higher than in our own, with a rate of 21.8% in Poland, 22.2% in the Czech Republic and 24.2% in Romania.

Interestingly,

Hungarians were more likely to borrow from friends and colleagues (12.5%) than from financial institutions in the past year.

This trend was only seen in Lithuania besides Hungary (with an even larger gap of 15.8% vs 10.9%). The other seven countries preferred financial institutions, explaining the 13.3% international average.

Education level continues to influence borrowing patterns. Those with higher education tend to turn to financial institutions (14%) after family members (21.1%), while those with basic and secondary education prefer friends and colleagues (13.6%) after family (30%) before considering financial institutions (11.4%).

The trend continues where

residents of the smallest Hungarian settlements are most likely to turn to family members (31.5%) and friends/colleagues (16.2%), with only 13.9% approaching financial institutions.

While Budapest shows similar but slightly lower proportions, medium-sized cities (100,000-500,000 inhabitants) have seen a significant shift: the preference for financial institutions dropped from 16.6% to 9.1%, while borrowing from friends and colleagues increased from 7.3% to 13.2%.

Cover photo (for illustration purposes only): Getty Images