Chart of the Week
NDR: What happened to the delinquency rate?
The consumer delinquency rate jumped 16 basis points, the most since Q2 2009, to 2.53% -- the highest since Q1 2013. It was the eighth straight quarterly rise. Clearly some consumers are struggling to keep up with rising interest rates. But the rate was still 0.7 deviations below the historical mean of 3.07%.
Digging deeper we found that credit cards have been driving the delinquency rate higher. The rate rose 21 basis point to nearly 3.00%, the most since Q1 2012. That was still 0.6 deviations below the mean of 3.74%. On the bright side, the rate of increase slowed from a rise of 34 basis points in Q2, which was the biggest since Q1 2009.