Credit Conundrum

As part of the CARES Act, lenders that allow borrowers to defer debt payments may not report those payments as late to credit-reporting firms. As such, borrower FICO scores are no longer as good at separating good borrowers from bad. As a consequence, many lenders are compensating by tightening standards for all consumer-loans, credit cards, and auto loans, depriving deserving households of credit, until they can figure out Plan B.