Life after (Soft) Default

Abstract

We analyze the impact of soft credit default (i.e. a delinquency of 90+ days) on individual trajectories. Using a proprietary dataset on about 2 million individuals for the years 2004 to 2020, we find that a soft default has substantial and long-lasting (i.e. up to ten years after the event) negative effects on credit score, total credit limit, home-ownership status, and income