ABA Consumer Discretionary Loan Delinquency Index

There is a category of distress data that exists but that most Americans will never see.

The ABA Consumer Credit Delinquency Bulletin compiles quarterly bank data across home equity, personal loans, property improvement loans, and other non-essential consumer credit. It goes out to member banks. It does not go out to borrowers, journalists, or the public.

The information gap matters. Lenders learn the delinquency trajectory on discretionary credit a quarter before it flows into the public FRED series that track Credit Card Delinquency and Non-Card Consumer Loan Delinquency. They can tighten underwriting and adjust subprime exposure while the household side of the market still believes credit is loose.

We list this indicator to mark the asymmetry. The public distress picture on discretionary borrowing is built from the series that do leak out — bank charge-offs, delinquency rates on cards and consumer loans, and the Subprime Originations data that shows when lenders reopen the credit box. When those three start moving together, the ABA data is almost certainly moving first.