By Telis Demos

The market's fears about loans aren't limited to what's happening with private credit.

Many headlines on Friday were focused on dividend cuts at business-development companies, which typically lend to privately-held, mid-sized companies.

Yet shares of consumer lenders were tumbling sharply on Friday, even without much data showing significant strain there yet.

Student-lender SLM Corp., online lenders LendingClub and Upstart, buy now-pay later provider Affirm and card giants American Express, Capital One Financial and Synchrony Financial were all down at least 6% on Friday.

"Investors remain on edge about the credit environment," Jefferies consumer-lending analysts wrote in a note on Thursday evening.

The analysts wrote that "credit remains stable" broadly across fintech lenders, with many delinquency rates still falling year-over-year.

However, an overall slowing of improvements to that trend is contributing to investors' concern, they said. Another worry has been a slowdown in lending volume growth from last year.

Also on Thursday, VantageScore reported that its CreditGauge tracker was seeing sharp increases in early-stage credit delinquencies across all tiers of borrowers in January, with the sharpest increase actually coming among well-heeled "superprime" consumers.

To be sure, late-payment rates were not especially elevated. For example, the early-stage delinquency rate for superprime borrowers was still below 0.01%.

However, "sustained cost pressures and interest rates may leave some consumers increasingly exposed to future economic shocks," VantageScore Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer Susan Fahy said in a statement.

At least some investors seem to think those risks aren't so remote.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 27, 2026 13:00 ET (18:00 GMT)

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