InfoBytes Blog
CFPB examines reported assistance trends on consumers’ credit records
On July 13, the CFPB released findings regarding trends in reported assistance on consumers’ credit records. The post—the second in a series documenting trends in consumer credit outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic (the first covered by InfoBytes here)—examines consumer month-to-month transitions into and out of assistance from January 2020 to April 2021. As previously covered by InfoBytes, last August, the Bureau issued a report examining trends through June 2020 in delinquency rates, payment assistance, credit access, and account balance measures, which showed that generally there was an overall decrease in delinquency rates since the start of the pandemic for auto loans, first-lien mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. According to the Bureau’s recent findings, as of March 2021, auto loans and credit card accounts with assistance were slightly above pre-pandemic levels, and the share of mortgages and student loans on assistance continued to be significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. Researchers also found that some communities have been disproportionately affected by the health and economic shocks of the pandemic: “majority Black census tracts, majority Hispanic census tracts, older borrowers and borrowers in counties hit hardest by COVID cases and layoffs were most likely to receive assistance in the early months of the pandemic.” Additionally, consumers in majority Hispanic census tracts were “more likely to exit assistance, but consumers in majority Black census tracts were somewhat less likely to exit assistance than their counterparts in majority white census tracts.”