August 26, 2021 / Source: CFPB

Credit access declined during the pandemic for credit cards, but increased for mortgages and auto loans

By Ryan Sandler – AUG 26, 2021

This is the fifth and final post in a series documenting trends in consumer credit outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This post focuses on access to new credit—the share of new credit applications that result in new accounts and the amount of credit that is extended to consumers who open new accounts. During the last recession in the late 2000s, creditors sharply pulled back on the availability of all types of credit to reduce their risk.  In a report we released in August 2020,  and updated in earlier post in this series, we showed there was not a pronounced reduction in available credit card credit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, although credit limit increases seem to have been halted for many consumers. However, because of lags in the reporting of new accounts, the August 2020 report did not discuss trends in access to new credit.