Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
American consumers’ balances on their car loans has risen over the last year, while the number of people making late payments has remained flat, according to the latest data from TransUnion.
Auto loan balances have jumped more than 4 percent between the second quarter of 2012 and the same period in 2013, with the current loan balance averaging $13,435. The increase signifies a trend of lenders nationwide approving higher loan amounts, with every state in the U.S. except Michigan seeing an increase in the average car loan balance during this time frame.
Additionally, borrowers with lower credit scores, so-called subprime borrowers, have seen their average debt on their car loans increase more than 7 percent in the last year, says TransUnion. That’s an indication that lenders are further loosening the car loan requirements for those with less-than-stellar credit scores.
Car loan delinquencies, defined by TransUnion as accounts that are 60 -days or more past due, remained essentially flat since last year, moving from 0.79 percent in the second quarter of 2012 to 0.8 percent in the second quarter of 2013. Delinquency rates for subprime consumers also remained at similar levels — 5.02 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to 4.94 percent for the same period last year.
Are you keeping up with your car loan payments?
Tara Baukus Mello writes the cars blog as well as the weekly Driving for Dollars column, providing both practical financial advice for consumers as well as insight into the latest developments in the automotive world. Follow her on Facebook here or on Twitter @SheDrives.
Share