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# Chinese cars are getting so cheap they’re creating a new problem for South Africa’s biggest car financier
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/chinese-cars-used-market-wesbank-resale-warning/
- Published: 2026-09-14T02:45:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T02:44:59.000Z
- Description: WesBank is financing more Chinese cars than anything else and provisioning against what they do to used prices, and the used-car trade does not agree that the shift is permanent.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

Cheap new cars from China have done two things to WesBank at once, and it reported both on the same morning. Six out of every ten vehicles the bank finances are now Chinese brands, FirstRand chief executive Mary Vilakazi told the results briefing, and the supplier and dealer deals behind that helped push its lending book up 14%. It also set aside money against what the cars already on that book will fetch when it has to sell them.

The mechanism is easier to see from where a buyer stands. Somebody who would once have bought a three-year-old used car can now afford a brand-new Chinese one for something like the same money. That pulls demand out of the used market, used prices soften, and the lender holding a repossessed car gets less for it than its books assumed. WesBank's filed wording for this is a judgemental management overlay for loss given default risk on used vehicle prices, which is money set aside against a loss it has not taken yet.

## What it cost, and what it earned

The overlay sits inside a bad-debt charge that rose 28%, to R2.6 billion. That was enough to push WesBank's earnings down 4% in a year when its lending book grew 14% and new vehicle-finance business grew faster still. Write-offs actually fell and recoveries improved. The drag was the cost of new lending and of insuring against a resale market the bank no longer trusts.

## The cars the numbers are about

The evidence underneath is less tidy than the provision suggests. Cars.co.za ran three-year depreciation on 2022 models and found the Chery Tiggo 4 Pro and the Haval Jolion holding their value better than the Renault Duster, the Kia Seltos and the Hyundai Creta. WeBuyCars, the biggest used-car dealer in the country, has had to cut prices on its dearer stock to compete, and still calls the deflation cyclic rather than structural. Chief executive Faan van der Walt told News24 that Haval and GWM hold value well, and that the Chinese arrivals have been good for his business.

WesBank's own monthly sales commentary said something closer to that in August, when its economist Thanda Sithole wrote that consumers keep favouring legacy brands, valuing established after-sales networks and predictable resale values.

The two readings are not quite in conflict. The provision is about what cheap new metal does to the price of every used car on WesBank's book, not about how fast a Chery loses value, and WesBank is the one carrying that risk either way. It has told the market to expect vehicle-finance growth to slow from here.