NEW YORK, NY - Data through February 2011, released today by Standard & Poor's and Experian for the S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices, a comprehensive measure of changes in consumer credit defaults, showed a decline in monthly default rates across all credit lines. Second Mortgages and bank card indices declined to 1.46% and 5.67% respectively. Auto Loan experienced a small decrease to 1.58%. First mortgage defaults fell to 2.45% with a monthly decline of over 14%.
"Default rates continue to fall across all major categories and year over year across the five high-lighted cities. The overall trend has lasted a number of months now, reflecting improved consumer health and the appearance of continued economic recovery," says Craig Feldman, Director at S&P Indices.
Consumer credit defaults varied across major cities and regions of the U.S. Among the five major Metropolitan Statistical Areas reported each month in this release, Los Angeles experienced a steady decrease in defaults this month to 2.70%. New York and Miami followed the trend with default rates of 2.53% and 6.05%. Dallas had the largest decrease in default rates to 1.78%. Chicago had an increase in defaults to 2.83%.
Jointly developed by Standard & Poor's and Experian, the S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices are published on the third Tuesday of each month at 9:00 am ET. They are constructed to accurately track the default experience of consumer balances in four key loan categories: auto, bankcard, first mortgage lien and second mortgage lien. The Indices are calculated based on data extracted from Experian's consumer credit database. This database is populated with individual consumer loan and payment data submitted by lenders to Experian every month. Experian's base of data contributors includes leading banks and mortgage companies, and covers approximately $11 trillion in outstanding loans sourced from 11,500 lenders.
Source: Standard & Poor's