Auto delinquencies remained flat last quarter, even though car loan and lease volume increased and the average automotive debt per borrower hit a record $17,508, TransUnion reported today.
Serious delinquencies, defined as delinquencies of 60 days or more, represented 0.99% of outstanding accounts, unchanged from the first quarter of 2014, according to Chicago-based TransUnion.
Subprime delinquency rates, defined as credit scores below 601 on the VantageScore 3.0 scale, showed a slight uptick to 5.19% in the first quarter of 2015, from 5.14% a year earlier.
Meanwhile, more than 71 million consumers had a loan or lease in the first quarter of 2015, an increase of 1.2 million from year-end 2014, TransUnion said. That was the biggest quarter-over-quarter increase since the Great Recession, TransUnion said.
The average debt per borrower of $17,508 was an increase of 3.8% from a year ago, the credit bureau said. That was the 16th straight quarter of increases, TransUnion said.
TransUnion said its figures for originations lag by one quarter, to make sure all accounts are included in the data.
For the fourth quarter of 2014, TransUnion said originations increased 8.3% from a year ago to 6.2 million accounts, including loans and leases. Subprime originations increased 6.2% from a year ago.
