© DataTalk Research Ltd July 2014 Page 1

BCI – Financial Optimism Index; June 2014

Consumer Confidence continues to rise.

The British Consumer Index (BCI) has today (18 July 2014) released the latest Financial Optimism Index.

The Financial Optimism Index measures how people think their personal financial situation will change over the next few months.

The three month rolling trend continues to show a rise in confidence. The June figure has, however, shown a slight fall from the record level achieved in May.

The chart (right) shows the trend in Financial Optimism for the population as a whole using a 3 month rolling average. The chart below shows the monthly data revealing the slight fall in June. It remains to be seen whether this is the start of a drop in optimism or merely ‘noise’.

Optimists outnumber Pessimists, but the gap is narrowing.

The British Consumer Index has been monitoring consumer confidence since January 2010. Over that period ‘Pessimists’ have

outnumbered ‘Optimists’ for the majority of the time. However, Quarter 1 of 2012 began a period of equality followed in Q1 2013 by a significant drop in the

number of pessimists, and modest rise in the number of optimists, putting the optimists into the majority.

The latest figures reverse that trend. The number of pessimists is rising and optimists falling, albeit to a lesser extent. The chart (left) shows the movement from neutral (stay the same) to negative.

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Who is Positive compared to Q2 2013?

Looking at the population as a whole provides the overall state of British optimism, or pessimism. Looking at the different sections of the population using Mosaic and P2 classifications:

Older groups have become more optimistic; Mosaic Active Retirement and P2 Senior Neighbourhoods.

Families with children are less confident; Mosaic Careers and Kids and P2 Blossoming Families.

Those in more rural areas are more positive; Mosaic Rural Solitude and P2 Country Orchards.

Disagreement appears to exist when it comes to Mosaic New Homemakers and P2 New Starters. However, while the titles of these segments are similar the composition is very different with almost half of P2 New Starters falling within the Mosaic Liberal Opinions Group. This illustrates the advantage of being able to analyse the data by different segmentations in order to identify the most differentiating classification. BCI has 11 different classifications built in and can also code the data with individual organisations own segment codes.

For further information, analysis and comment contact:

Steve Abbott; Director; The British Consumer Index

Email; stevea@thebps.co.uk

Tel; 0203 286 1981

Skype; steveathebps

Notes: Figures are collected by The British Population Survey by face to face in home interviews with a population representative sample of 1,000 adults aged 15+ per month (total sample size = 54,904).

Financial Optimism Index values range between 100 (fully positive) and -100 (fully negative).