Missed-Payment Odds and Auto Loan Rejection Rates in 2026: Reading the New York Fed's Consumer Expectations Surveys

TL;DR

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's September 2026 Survey of Consumer Expectations, released October 7, 2026, puts the mean perceived probability of missing a minimum debt payment in the next three months at 12.2%, down from 13.2% in August.
Credit felt tighter: 49.9% of respondents said in September 2026 that credit is harder to get than a year ago, against 45.9% in August.
In the June 2026 SCE Credit Access Survey, 12.0% of respondents had applied for an auto loan in the prior twelve months and 6.7% of those applicants reported a rejection. Across all credit types the rejection rate was 16.1%, against 23.1% in June 2025.
Outcomes moved far less. From June 2025 to June 2026 the survey reading ranged from 10.8% to 15.3%, while the New York Fed's annualized flow of auto loan balances into serious delinquency stayed between 2.93% and 3.00%.
A survey of about 1,300 household heads, asked about any debt, is a prompt to check a lender's own early-stage numbers, not a forecast.

Why this matters

This post is for the collections manager, CFO or credit manager at an auto lender or buy-here-pay-here (BHPH) dealer-lender who plans staffing from delinquency reports that arrive weeks after a quarter ends. As of October 2026, two New York Fed surveys report what households themselves expect, and they arrive sooner: the monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) and the SCE Credit Access Survey, fielded three times a year.

Our posts on auto loan delinquency in Q2 2026 and bank and credit union auto loan performance cover what borrowers did. This one covers what households told the Federal Reserve Bank of New York they expected. Every sourced figure was read on the publisher's own page or data file on October 10, 2026.

What the New York Fed asks, and whom

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's October 7, 2026 release describes the SCE as "a nationally representative, internet-based survey of a rotating panel of approximately 1,300 household heads". The methodology overview that release links to defines a household head as "the person in the household who owns, is buying, or rents the home".

The delinquency question, as printed in the survey questionnaire, reads: "What do you think is the percent chance that, over the next 3 months, you will NOT be able to make one of your debt payments (that is, the minimum required payments on credit and retail cards, auto loans, student loans, mortgages, or any other debt you may have)?" The published figure is the mean of the answers.

The question covers any debt, so an auto payment is one of several a respondent may have in mind. The figure is a mean of stated probabilities: 12.2% does not say that 12.2% of households expect to miss a payment. And an expectation is not an outcome.

The Credit Access Survey is a module of the same survey. The New York Fed's FAQ says it is "fielded every four months, with data collected during February, June, and October of each year".

Source: Survey of Consumer Expectations, © 2013-2026 Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). The SCE data are available without charge at http://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/sce and may be used subject to license terms posted there. FRBNY disclaims any responsibility or legal liability for this analysis and interpretation of Survey of Consumer Expectations data.

The September 2026 survey: missed payments, credit access, jobs and income

The table gives September beside August; August values are from the New York Fed's September 8 release.

Measure	September 2026	August 2026	Comparison in the release
Mean probability of missing a minimum debt payment, next three months	12.2%	13.2%	12-month trailing average 12.7%
Mean probability of losing one's job, next 12 months	13.5%	13.8%	Lowest since December 2024
Mean probability of finding a job if the current one were lost	46.1%	45.4%	12-month trailing average 45.5%
Mean probability that U.S. unemployment is higher in a year	43.9%	44.4%	12-month trailing average 42.4%
Median expected household income growth	3.1%	3.0%	Highest since February 2025
Median expected household spending growth	5.5%	5.2%	Highest since May 2023

On credit, the release says: "Perceptions of credit access compared to a year ago declined, with the net share of households reporting it is harder to get credit increasing." The New York Fed's chart data puts numbers on that: 15.5% of respondents said credit was much harder to get than a year ago and 34.4% somewhat harder, 49.9% together, against 45.9% in August. Looking a year ahead, 48.8% expected it to be harder, against 48.1%; the release calls those expectations "essentially unchanged".

The release attributes the fall in job loss expectations to "those between ages 40 to 60 and those with annual household incomes over $100,000" and calls the rise in spending expectations "broad-based across age and education groups". It gives no breakdown for the missed-payment measure, but the chart data does: 17.4% for households with income under $50,000, 11.7% from $50,000 to $100,000 and 8.3% over $100,000.

On the same measure, the release for December 2025 reported 15.3%, "the highest reading since April 2020"; the release for June 2026 reported 10.8%, "the lowest reading since April 2023".

The June 2026 Credit Access Survey: auto loan applications and rejections

The latest published round is June 2026; October's had not appeared as of October 10. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Credit Access Survey page reports that application rates for any kind of credit "increased in June to the highest level since October 2021". The auto lines are in the survey's chart data, which rests on 895 observations for June 2026.

Measure	June 2026	February 2026	June 2025
Rejected at least once, among applicants for any credit	16.1%	15.9%	23.1%
Discouraged: did not apply, not expecting approval	5.2%	8.3%	7.2%
Applied for an auto loan, past 12 months	12.0%	10.6%	13.5%
Auto loan rejection rate, among auto applicants	6.7%	10.8%	6.7%
Mean likelihood of applying for an auto loan, next 12 months	10.3%	10.8%	10.5%
Mean perceived chance an auto application is rejected	28.9%	32.1%	30.6%

Per the Bank's chart guide, an application counts as rejected only "if it is fully rejected", and discouraged respondents are those who applied for nothing and gave the reason "I did not think I would get approved". The auto rejection rate is calculated only among auto loan applicants, about 12% of 895 respondents, and it has swung widely from round to round: 15.2% in October 2025, 10.8% in February 2026, 6.7% in June 2026. The overall rate rests on more answers; its October 2025 reading, 24.8%, is the highest in the workbook's series.

The workbook also splits respondents by the credit score they report. Among the 151 who put theirs below 680 in June 2026, 20.3% had applied for an auto loan, 46.6% of those who applied for any credit were rejected at least once, and 20.7% were discouraged. Among the 508 above 760, the figures were 10.3%, 3.3% and 0.6%.

Beside what actually happened

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Household Debt and Credit Report for 2026:Q2, released August 11, 2026, shows an annualized 3.00% of auto loan balances flowing into serious delinquency (90 or more days), against 2.93% a year earlier; its footnote says the rates "represent annualized shares of balances transitioning into delinquency". The data workbook puts 5.49% of auto balances 90 or more days delinquent at the end of June and the annualized flow into delinquency of 30 or more days at 7.87%.

Quarter	SCE reading, quarter's last month	Auto balances newly 30+ days delinquent, annualized	Newly 90+ days delinquent, annualized
2025:Q2	12.0%	7.96%	2.93%
2025:Q3	12.6%	7.79%	2.99%
2025:Q4	15.3%	7.70%	2.95%
2026:Q1	12.3%	7.72%	2.97%
2026:Q2	10.8%	7.87%	3.00%

The survey column, from the SCE chart data, moved between 10.8% and 15.3%; the auto flows barely moved. Part of that steadiness is built in: the New York Fed's report labels both flow charts "4 Quarter Moving Sum", so each reading shares three of its four quarters with the one before it. December's 15.3% looked ahead into the first quarter of 2026, when each published flow was two hundredths of a point above the reading a quarter earlier. The columns measure different things, a monthly mean of stated probabilities about any debt and four-quarter sums of the share of auto balances turning delinquent on credit reports, and over this stretch the first was not a quarter-by-quarter guide to the second.

The Federal Reserve Board's G.19 release of October 7, 2026 carries August 2026 data. Motor vehicle loans outstanding, a quarter-end memo item, were $1,574.6 billion for the second quarter of 2026, revised from $1,574.8 billion in the September 8 release, against $1,559.7 billion in the first quarter. New-car loan rates at commercial banks, read in the first week of each quarter's middle month, were 7.54% on 60-month loans and 7.17% on 72-month loans in August 2026, against 7.14% and 6.97% in the second quarter.

What a servicing floor does with expectations data

Treat it as an early prompt. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published the September survey seven days after the month closed; its second-quarter delinquency report came six weeks after the quarter. A rise in the missed-payment reading is a reason to look that week at the lender's own first-payment defaults, 1-to-15-day bucket and promise-kept rate. Our guide to collections KPIs for auto lenders sets out which indicators respond first. A lender whose customers are mostly lower-income households has more reason to watch the under-$50,000 line, 17.4% in September, than the 12.2% headline.

Move capacity only on the lender's own numbers. If the early bucket confirms what the survey suggests, the response sits at the front of the cycle: pre-due reminders and first contacts in the first days past due. That is where a first-party collections support team is usually deployed, inside the lender's system.

Read credit access for the applicant pool, with care. A BHPH dealership typically finances buyers who could not get a conventional loan. The survey counts households who report a rejection or expected one, but not which lenders rejected them or where they went next, so it cannot show rejections at prime lenders specifically. In June 2026 the overall rejection rate, the auto rejection rate and the discouraged share were each below their October 2025 readings: a smaller share of households described themselves as turned away. Whether that changes who applies at a given lot is a question for the lender's own application counts and approval mix.

An illustrative operating example

The following example is illustrative, uses round numbers and is not a client result.

A dealer-lender with 6,000 active accounts keeps a monthly watch list: the survey headline, the under-$50,000 line, and its own early-stage numbers. Its rule: two consecutive monthly rises in the survey trigger a review of its own data, and staffing changes only if that data agrees.

In one scenario the survey rises from 12% to 14% over two months, and the lender's accounts 1 to 15 days past due rise from 400 to 460. The 60 extra accounts, at three contact attempts each in the first ten days, add 180 attempts. The manager also extends pre-due reminder calls from 15% of accounts (900 a month) to 25% (1,500 a month), adding 600 reminder contacts.

In the other scenario the survey rises by the same two points and the early bucket stays at 400. The survey prompted the check; the portfolio answered it.

What operators say

Both statements are issued in the Bank's name; neither page names an individual researcher.

From the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's October 7, 2026 release: "The average perceived probability of missing a minimum debt payment over the next three months decreased by 1.0 percentage point to 12.2%, falling below its 12-month trailing average of 12.7%."

From the New York Fed's Credit Access Survey page, on the June 2026 round: "The overall rejection rate for any kind of credit over the past twelve months increased slightly to 16.1 percent in June, but remains well below the June 2025 reading of 23.1 percent."

Frequently asked questions

What is the probability of missing a debt payment in the Survey of Consumer Expectations?

It is the mean answer household heads give when the New York Fed asks for the percent chance that they will not be able to make a minimum debt payment in the next three months. In the September 2026 survey it was 12.2%, down from 13.2% in August. The question covers any debt, not auto loans alone.

What was the auto loan rejection rate in 2026?

In the New York Fed's SCE Credit Access Survey, 6.7% of respondents who had applied for an auto loan in the prior twelve months reported a rejection in the June 2026 round, against 10.8% in February 2026. The rate counts only fully rejected applications and is calculated among auto loan applicants only, about 12% of respondents in June 2026.

What was the auto loan application rate in the latest Credit Access Survey?

In the June 2026 round, 12.0% of respondents reported applying for an auto loan in the prior twelve months, up from 10.6% in February 2026 and below the 13.5% of June 2025. Respondents put the average likelihood of applying for one in the next twelve months at 10.3%.

Does a higher missed-payment expectation mean auto loan delinquency will rise?

The past year does not show it. The survey reading reached 15.3% in December 2025 and fell to 10.8% in June 2026, while the New York Fed's annualized flow of auto loan balances into serious delinquency stayed between 2.93% and 3.00%. The survey is a prompt to check a lender's own numbers, not a forecast.

Who answers the surveys, and how often are they published?

The New York Fed describes the Survey of Consumer Expectations as a nationally representative, internet-based survey of a rotating panel of approximately 1,300 household heads, fielded monthly. The Credit Access Survey is a module of it, fielded every four months, with 895 observations in June 2026.

The bottom line

The New York Fed's two surveys say what households expect and what they report: a 12.2% mean perceived probability of missing a debt payment in the next three months, in the September 2026 survey, per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's October 7, 2026 release, and 6.7% of auto loan applicants reporting a rejection in the June 2026 round, per the New York Fed's Credit Access Survey chart data. The outcome data for the same period moved much less.

For an operator the value is timing. The surveys arrive first, which earns them a line on the monthly watch list next to the quarterly delinquency numbers. If the lender's own data then shows the first days past due are where capacity is short, a dedicated team is one option to weigh, and you can tell us about your portfolio to talk through fit.