Smart Borrower Blog

Archive for July, 2016

New System to Simplify Federal Student Loan Experience

Last week the U.S. Department of Education laid out a new system to make repaying federal student loans a smoother process, a fulfillment of its directive from the March 2015 Student Aid Bill of Rights. Since 2015, the DOE has been surveying borrowers, student loan industry players and consumer advocated to find out how to make […]

Auto Loan Industry Continues to Boom but Not Without Risks

The U.S. auto lending industry has been busy this year. Car loans and leases grew to a total value of $1 trillion a few months ago, with large lenders like JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo seeing almost double-digit growth in volume since 2015. And yet this stellar rise carries a lot of risk of […]

Large and Small Business Borrowing Slumped in May

Two separate reports found that U.S. businesses, both large and small, cut back on borrowing in May, a sign that the economy was already on rocky ground before the tumult of Brexit in June. The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index fell to 128.6 in May from an upwardly revised 129.5 in April. The PayNet […]

Consumers Push Mortgage, Credit Card Delinquencies Lower

U.S. consumers continued to manage their debts better in the first quarter, according to the latest report from the American Bankers Association, with delinquencies falling in seven of the 11 tracked loan categories. “More people have jobs, wages are higher, home values have increased and consumers didn’t overextend themselves during the holiday season,” said James […]