Dive Brief:

• Contrary to concerns about rising prices, more than half (52%) of Americans said they felt optimistic about their household finances for the upcoming year, TransUnion reported in a fourth-quarter consumer survey. That was about the same as the previous quarter. On the other hand, more than a quarter (26%) said they were pessimistic about the state of their household finances in the next 12 months.
• In addition, 54% of consumers said their incomes weren’t keeping up with inflation, while 83% said that inflation was one of their top three financial concerns for the next six months, according to the report.
• Separately, in a 2023 consumer credit forecast, TransUnion projected that financial institutions will originate 80.9 million credit cards in a decline from this year. Mortgage and personal loans are also expected to decrease while auto loans and home equity lines of credit will rise next year, the credit rating bureau forecast.

Dive Insight:

Concerns about inflation differ slightly across generations and incomes, according to the TransUnion survey. While 86% of Gen X and 87% of baby boomers cited inflation as one of their top three household financial concerns, 77% of Gen Z and 78% of millennials said the same.

For consumers earning between $50,000 and $99,000, which was the survey’s middle bracket, 89% said that inflation was one of their top three financial concerns, the highest share across income levels, according to the Q4 report. 

TransUnion said it expects delinquency rates to increase next year as unemployment rises and inflation constricts consumers’ finances. The credit rating bureau also predicts that the share of consumers with more than 60 days past due on their accounts will rise to 4.3% next year, a slight increase from 4.10% in 2022.

“In the midst of an unsettled economic environment, lenders are likely to scrutinize origination strategies and their expected results, thus resulting in a slowdown in originations over the course of 2023,” Paul Siegfried, senior vice president and credit card business leader at TransUnion, said in the statement. “However, it’s important to put the current credit card marketplace in perspective. When taking 2022 out of the equation, more consumers will gain access to credit cards in 2023 than in any other year in the last decade. In fact, TransUnion expects 14 million more credit cards to be issued in 2023 than in 2019, a strong year for the consumer credit market.”

In its projections, TransUnion forecast originations of 28.8 million auto loans, 19.3 million personal loans, 5.4 million mortgage loans and 3.7 million home equity lines of credit.

The research also suggests that consumers are increasingly leaning on credit cards. TransUnion said credit card originations peaked this year at 87.5 million, up from 66.8 million in 2019.

Meanwhile, a November report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank found that the rate at which consumers applied for credit cards in the previous 12 months increased by 27.1% in October, up from 26.5% last year and 26.3% in February 2020.