(Co)Authored
2022 | 7 | 27
- Medical
Collection Removal
- This report explores the characteristics of consumers with reported
medical collections and focuses on the current state of medical
collections that appear on consumer credit reports and medical
collections that are likely to be removed from consumer credit reports
in the next year.
2022 | 5 | 13
- Credit
Card Late Fees
- Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers had steadily been paying
more in credit card late fees each year—peaking at over $14 billion in
2019. Late fees assessed by issuers declined to about $12 billion in
2020 given record-high payment rates and public and private relief
efforts. Even during the pandemic, late fees accounted for over
one-tenth of the $120 billion consumers pay in credit card interest and
fees annually. In 2021, total late fee volume was on the rise again
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2022 | 2 | 11
- Delinquency
Rates and the “Missing Originations” in the Auto Loan Market
- One of the surprising characteristics of the economic downturn
induced by the COVID-19 pandemic is that delinquency rates in most
consumer credit markets have remained low both during the downturn and
the subsequent recovery. The existing literature has emphasized the
roles that forbearance policies and various government stimulus programs
played in helping households meet their debt obligations (Dettling and
Lambie-Hanson, 2021; Bakshi and Rose, 2021). In this note, we examine an
additional factor that has contributed to low delinquency rates: a drop
in originations of new loans to risky borrowers most likely to become
delinquent.
2021 | 7 | 15
- Credit
Bureau Entry Age and First Credit Type Effects on Credit Score
- This note presents some statistics regarding the distribution of the
ages of consumers as they are added to credit reporting data and the
longer-term implications of their entry-age and initial credit
type.
2021 | 4 | 30
- Developments
in the Credit Score Distribution over 2020
- The distribution of household credit risk can vary with aggregate
economic and credit conditions. For example, the share of
subprime-scored borrowers declined at a relatively steady pace during
the economic recovery from the Global Financial Crisis. Although the
COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the economic conditions that supported
this trend, the pace of decline accelerated following the pandemic’s
onset in March 2020.
Assisted
2021 | 1 | 1
- Is
Lending Distance Really Changing? Distance Dynamics and Loan Composition
in Small Business Lending
- Has information technology improved small businesses’ credit access
by hardening the information used in loan underwriting and reducing the
importance of lender proximity? Previous research, pointing to
increasing average lending distances, suggests that it has. Using over
20 years of Community Reinvestment Act data, we find that while average
distances have increased substantially, distances at individual banks
remain unchanged. Instead, average distance has increased because a
small group of lenders specializing in high-volume, small-loan lending
nationwide have increased their share of small business lending by 10
percentage points. Our findings imply that small businesses continue to
depend on local banks