CFPB reports on credit card line decreases

Federal Issues CFPB Consumer Finance Credit Cards Credit Report Consumer Reporting Agency

On June 29, the CFPB issued a report analyzing the impact of credit card line decreases (CLD) on consumers. The report is a part of a CFPB series that examines consumer credit trends using a longitudinal sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records maintained by one of the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies. The report described how credit card companies increasingly used credit line decreases during both the Great Recession and at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the Bureau, in issuing the report it “sought to examine the importance and impact of these decisions by credit card companies” because of the “critical role credit plays in financial resiliency, especially during a downturn.” Key findings of the report include, among other things, that: (i) 67 percent of consumers who had CLDs did not show evidence of a recent delinquency on any credit card, and 83 percent had no delinquency on the card that received the CLD; (ii) the median amount of credit decreased by approximately 75 percent for consumers across different credit score tiers; (iii) the median deep subprime, subprime, near-prime, and prime account utilization reached 94 percent when the CLD was applied; and (iv) the median credit scores for consumers with a recent card delinquency on any card decreased between 33 and 87 points.