Quarterly Consumer Credit Trends: Recent trends in debt settlement and credit counseling
This is part of a series of quarterly reports of consumer credit trends produced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau using a longitudinal, nationally-representative sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records maintained by one of the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies. This tenth report describes trends in debt settlement and credit counseling during the Great Recession and in recent years. This report shows that nearly one in thirteen consumers with a credit record had at least one account settled through a creditor or had account payments managed by a credit counseling agency from 2007 through 2019. Since 2016, the number of debt settlements has increased steadily, while credit counseling numbers are relatively unchanged.