Search Results
Discussion Paper
Introducing the SCE Credit Access Survey
Today, we are releasing new data on consumers? experiences and expectations regarding credit demand. We?ve been collecting these data every four months since mid-2013, as part of our Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE). Other data sources describing consumer credit either provide aggregates that are an interaction of credit supply and demand (such as the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel), or show only short-term changes in supply and demand (as reported by the supply side in the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey), or are too infrequent to provide a real-time picture of changes in consumer ...
Discussion Paper
Who Uses “Buy Now, Pay Later?”
“Buy now, pay later” (BNPL) has become an increasingly popular form of payment among Americans in recent years. While BNPL provides shoppers with the flexibility to pay for goods and services over time, usually with zero interest, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has identified several areas of potential consumer harm associated with its growing use, including inconsistent consumer protections, and the risk of excessive debt accumulation and over-extension. BNPL proponents have argued that the service enables improved credit access and greater financial inclusion, with ...
Speech
Welcoming Remarks: 2025 Crossing the Credit Barrier Conference
St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem gave welcoming remarks to open the two-day conference. Held at the St. Louis Fed, the conference was co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston, Philadelphia and Richmond.
Discussion Paper
Consumer Credit Demand, Supply, and Unmet Need during the Pandemic
It is common during recessions to observe significant slowdowns in credit flows to consumers. It is more difficult to establish how much of these declines are the consequence of a decrease in credit demand versus a tightening in supply. In this post, we draw on survey data to examine how consumer credit demand and supply have changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The evidence reveals a clear initial decline and recent rebound in consumer credit demand. We also observe a modest but persistent tightening in credit supply during the pandemic, especially for credit cards. Mortgage ...
Working Paper
First-Time Homebuyers: Toward a New Measure
Existing data sources show divergent estimates of the number of homes purchased by first-time homebuyers as a share of all home purchases. In this paper, we use a new data set to construct a time series of the share of first-time homebuyers. This series, based on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Equifax Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), shows a significant decline in this share, particularly for young households, which is consistent with the decline in homeownership in this age cohort since the early 2000s.
Working Paper
Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending
We study the effect of Department of Justice lawsuits in the 2010s against large lenders for alleged fraud in the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance program. The suits led to more than $5 billion in settlements and caused targeted banks and their peers to precipitously exit the FHA market. Difference-in-differences and triple differences tests exploiting geographic variation in exposure to exiting banks show a 20 percent reduction in FHA lending in heavily exposed areas. This reduction was not associated with improved underwriting standards or lower default rates. Large ...
Working Paper
Basic Facts on the Coverage of the Paycheck Protection Program
This paper applies loan-level information from Paycheck Protection Program loans to analyze the coverage of this extraordinary lending program. We show that loans went to a large share of small businesses across most industries in the US, especially to industries that were most negatively impacted by COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. We geocode the loans and then identify that 2021 loans were more concentrated in low- and moderate-income communities, along with census tracts where minority residents are a majority of the population. The growth of nonemployer loans and fintech lending in the ...
Discussion Paper
Trends in Debt Concentration in the United States By Income
Household debt in the United States expanded before the Great Recession, contracted afterward, and has been recovering since 2013. But how has the distribution of debt across different income groups evolved over time? Who has been driving the recovery of household debt over the past two years? To date, there has been little work on how borrowing patterns for high- and low-income individuals have changed over time, although one notable exception is Amromin and McGranahan. Here, using the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), a quarterly panel data set based on Equifax credit reports, we ...
Discussion Paper
Just Released: A Closer Look at Recent Tightening in Consumer Credit
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released results today from its October 2018 SCE Credit Access Survey, which provides information on consumers' experiences with and expectations about credit demand and credit access. The survey is fielded every four months and was previously fielded in June.
Journal Article
District Digest
Many Americans take access to credit for granted. It's easy for them to underestimate the importance of credit. But without it, a person's economic advancement may become more challenging. For example, in many areas, the inability to secure an auto loan — and thus, a car — could limit employment options, access to healthy food, or medical care.Different people have disparate experiences in accessing credit. For those who are financially underserved, the market has produced credit alternatives. But many of those alternatives, such as payday lenders, offer unfavorable terms that often ...