Podcast: Future of CFPB funding questioned

Truth Headlam Hi everyone and welcome to The Road Map from Auto Finance News since 1996, the nation’s leading newsletter on automotive lending and leasing. It is Monday, November 17th and I’m Truth Headlam. First, I’d like to thank our sponsor for this week’s podcast, The Work Number by Equifax. The compliance industry hit its latest Rd. bump of the year with the decision by the Department of Justice on November 7th that stated that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can only request funding from the Fed’s profits exclusively. This is an issue because the Fed has not been profitable since 2022. And on November 10th, the CFPB submitted a filing to the District Court of Columbia, which stated that the Bureau has enough funding to be operational through the end of the year. However, the CFPB’s fate in 2026 is uncertain. In other government related news, the historic 43 day government shutdown ended on November 12th. This was a celebrated moment by many folks across the country and it can have potential upsides for the auto industry, more specifically auto sales. Erin Keating, Senior Analyst at Cox Automotive, told on Finance News that it’s a good assumption to make that if consumer sentiment is continuing to go down and it’s partially a result of what’s going on in our larger world, that it could impact consumers decision-making process in the. Short term and now that the government shutdown is over, it is possible to see it pick up in activity. This is important because while the two cannot be directly correlated, this shows that there could have been some effect on auto sales. During October and early November as a result of the shutdown. And despite the headwinds in the auto industry, experts and executives painted a picture of resilience for lenders, dealers and consumers alike during the Auto Finance Summit 2025 last month in Las Vegas. Now for some more auto in the industry updates and power sports news. So I’ll turn it over to Aidan. Aidan Bush Thank you so much, Truth. So this week especially is a big week for Tricolor, which is that subprime buy here, pay here retailer that went bankrupt in September and we’ve been tracking sort of the bankruptcy proceedings of today and tomorrow. There are both. Two major court hearings. Today’s is focused primarily around sort of the procedural aspects of the actual bankruptcy itself. So how Vervent, which is the current backup servicer of Tricolor, will continue to service the existing Tricolor loans. Its progress as far as repossessing some of the 8000 vehicles that were left on Tricolor lots and some general other agreements between it, Origin Bank and some other lenders. We will also get updates on the status of Tricolor Trustee Anne Burns ability to use. Cash collateral from Tricolor in limited avenues. There was an interim motion that they paid for back last month for insurance on those existing vehicles that were still on lots that should be up by now. So those are some of the things we’ll be tracking tomorrow for Tricolor. We will hear from a Tricolor. Representative for the first time since the bankruptcy in what’s called a 341 meeting of the creditors, where anyone owed debts by Tricolor can ask questions and the representative has to testify under oath. So that’s sort of the picture of Tricolor stories for this week. Be sure to check back on the site. We’ll be having a lot that looks like we may also. We also have our first look at some of the costs associated with the takeover of Tricolor’s existing loans, so be sure to check back on our site regularly for some of those updates. Aside from Tricolor though, I was also in Vegas for RV Dealers Convention and Expo 2025 and there’s a lot of really insightful takeaways. There, especially as it becomes to consumer demand and consumer demographics. So to start off, RV dealers are really seeing more diversity in its consumer base, both from their own kind of consumer background, but then also the amount of money they’re making. So there was a statistical surveys panel and in that panel. They announced they’ve seen consumers with higher household incomes rise, especially with consumers of an average income of $250,000 or more is increasing. They also saw a rise in Hispanic consumers, which has gone up 22% since 2021.Meanwhile, others are seeing a shift toward sort of a younger consumer group. So if we typically think of 55 to 65 as the range of the average consumer age for an RV, there’s been an uptick in this 35 to 50 year old consumer range who are looking for experiences with their families may have started around COVID. And may also have lower credit scores. So with some of those demographic shifts, we saw RV retailers remain bullish despite some dipping down in consumer demand. That same statistical surveys panel showed that the amount of new vehicle registrations from January to September this year dipped about 0.6%, so less than 1% year over year and used RV registrations fell 2.4% year over year. Their enthusiasm comes because those declines were actually much more gradual than declines from years prior. So sort of the comparison that was given was that from 2023 to 2024. Registrations dropped around 11%. So you can tell that sort of a much more dramatic drop than these gradual numbers, which might indicate a normalization to pre-pandemic levels. And one other note is that while there may have been more industry enthusiasm.
There did seem to be less enthusiasm among dealers and lenders for the adoption of AI, with many on both sides sort of waiting for a clear value to make that, you know, new technology worth investing in. And you can read more about that from an article I read recently as well. So thank you for that. I think that is all.
That I have, so I will turn it back over to truth. Truth Headlam 6:34
Thanks, Aidan. So in other news, several lenders reported their third quarter earnings last week. For starters, Pagaya Technologies annualized run rate for auto reached 2.2 billion in the third quarter. That’s an uptick of 10% quarter over quarter.
And total revenues from fees driven by the auto and personal loan business rose 36% year-over-year to 340 million. Now that made-up 97% of total revenue.
For Vroom, for Vroom, which is a subsidiary of United Auto Credit Corp, it originated 107 million in the third quarter. That was an uptick of 7% year-over-year, but it was down 6%. Roughly quarter over quarter and the service portfolio for Room landed at 972 million, which was down 8.3% year over year and 2.6% quarter over quarter.
Consumer Portfolio Services for their purchase contracts or originations totaled 391 million in Q3. This was down 12.3% year over year and 9.7% quarter over quarter CBSS. Total portfolio balance climbed 13%, however, year-over-year to 3.8 million in the third quarter, and total revenue rose 7.8% year-over-year to 108.4 million.
That’s all from us for this week. As always, thanks for joining us on the roadmap and be sure to follow us on X and LinkedIn. We will see you online at autofinancenews.net.net here and next time. And again, thank you to our sponsor, Equifax lenders who leverage income and employment verification.
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