Consumers are moving from standing on the sidelines to actually increasing their credit utilization, especially in auto loans, to get ahead of the tariff pricing they expect later in the year.
VantageScore President and CEO Silvio Tavares spoke with Yahoo! Finance to discuss the latest insights on consumer credit analytics from VantageScore’s monthly CreditGauge report.
Resilient is a really good way to describe the consumer right now,” added Tavares. “We are seeing average credit balances staying about the same and delinquencies really moderate. Consumers are willing to use credit to get ahead of the tariff price increases they expect.
In addition, Tavares explained that credit utilization trends reaffirm that consumers are not yet at a point of concern:
Normally, if you see an increasing credit utilization and worsening in the environment, that’s where you get concerned. We didn’t see that through April, and the employment numbers from this week showed that overall employment is steady. That’s another sign that consumers are quite credit healthy.
See the full interview below: