Interest in Financial Products Falls 18% Since April

Forget all the noise about inflation and unemployment and consumer confidence. Let’s get down to brass tacks. Do consumes want financial products or not?

The answer is far fewer of them. Google maintains an index of interest in financial and insurance product here and the index is down more than 18% since April, which means that despite some life in the US economy, demand for financial products is not climbing in kind. The index certainly doesn’t indicate actual sales, but “interest” (or, more specifically, web searches related to financial products), but it still offers a reasonable indicator for demand.

The index is all the more jarring when you consider that interest in banking products is down slightly more than 3%. We all remember what was going on in the global economy and with consumer confidence exactly a year ago.

Can we suggest that the demand curve for financial products has inexorably been altered forever as a result of the Great Recession? Of course not. But for now, the story is not a happy one.