Personal Loan Statistics (2026)

A personal loan is an installment loan, usually unsecured, that is repaid in fixed monthly payments over a set term. This page covers the unsecured kind, which TransUnion tracks quarterly from its US consumer credit database, plus the Federal Reserve's data on what banks charge for them.

The short version for mid-2026: more people are borrowing than ever, the amount each borrower owes has barely changed in three years, and the average bank rate is about two and a half points higher than in 2021. For revolving debt see credit card debt statistics, and for every type of household borrowing together see household debt statistics.

Unsecured personal loan balances reached a record $281 billion in Q2 2026 (the deck puts it at $281.2 billion), up 9.6% from a year earlier and 1.5% from Q1 2026, according to the TransUnion Q2 2026 Credit Industry Insights Report. Balances have grown about 46% from $192 billion in Q2 2022 (see the chart and table below).

Growth sped up through 2025. Year-over-year balance growth ran near 4% in the first half of 2025, then jumped to 8.0% in Q3 2025 and 9.8% in Q4 2025, when balances hit $276 billion. TransUnion notes personal loan balances are now growing more than twice as fast as credit card balances, which rose 4.4% to $1.14 trillion over the same year.

26.9 million consumers had an unsecured personal loan in Q2 2026, a record and up 8.3% from 24.8 million a year earlier. They held 33.3 million loans, up 10.7%, so the typical borrower has about 1.2 loans open at once.

For scale, TransUnion counted 261.7 million US consumers carrying some kind of credit balance in Q2 2026, so roughly 1 in 10 credit-active consumers has a personal loan. The borrower count has climbed from 21.0 million in Q2 2022, a gain of nearly 6 million people in four years.

The average personal loan borrower owed $11,694 in Q2 2026, almost unchanged from $11,676 a year earlier and $11,548 in Q2 2023. The average balance on a single loan account was $8,437, slightly lower than $8,524 in Q2 2025.

That flat average is the main story of this cycle. Total balances are growing because more people are borrowing, not because each person is borrowing more. Average debt per borrower did rise sharply between Q2 2022 ($10,344) and Q2 2023 ($11,548), and has held near that level since.

Lenders opened 6.4 million new unsecured personal loans in Q1 2026, up 19.5% from 5.4 million in Q1 2025 (TransUnion reports originations one quarter in arrears). The busiest quarters on record came just before: 7.2 million in Q3 2025 and 7.6 million in Q4 2025, per TransUnion's highlights deck.

Q1 is seasonally slower, so the year-over-year comparison is the cleaner read. On that basis, Q1 2026 originations were well above the 4.3 million to 5.0 million range seen in the same quarter of 2022 to 2024.

Growth is concentrated at the riskier end. Subprime originations (VantageScore 300 to 600) rose about 29% year over year in Q1 2026 and made up 38.2% of all new personal loans, up from 35.4% a year earlier. Near prime originations grew 19.6%, roughly in line with the market, while prime, prime plus and super prime grew about 9% to 11% (see the table below).

The count of subprime borrowers rose 18.4% and subprime accounts rose 20.5% over the year to Q2 2026. Borrower counts grew in every tier: about 7.5% in near prime, 4.0% in prime, 4.3% in prime plus and 5.6% in super prime, per the TransUnion deck.

Subprime borrowers account for the most new loans but the fewest dollars. They held just 11.5% of personal loan balances in Q2 2026, while prime (24.1%), prime plus (23.0%) and super prime (23.0%) borrowers together held about 70% (see the table below).

Those shares were almost identical a year earlier, which means balances grew at about the same pace across tiers even though new-loan counts grew fastest in subprime. The explanation is loan size, covered next.

The average new subprime personal loan fell 6.8% to roughly $2,260 in Q1 2026, from about $2,400 a year earlier. Near prime new loans were flat at about $4,900. Every stronger tier got bigger loans: about $10,000 for prime, $16,300 for prime plus and $18,700 for super prime (see the chart below).

So a super prime borrower's new loan is roughly eight times the size of a subprime borrower's. TransUnion describes this as lenders reaching more higher-risk consumers while limiting the dollars placed on each one.

Fintech lenders made a record 45.0% of unsecured personal loan originations in Q1 2026, up from 39.8% in Q1 2025 and 34.0% in Q4 2024. Their originations rose 35.0% in a year, adding about 751,000 loans (see the chart below).

Traditional lenders lost share even where they grew in volume. Finance companies made 26.9% of new loans (down from 29.3%), credit unions 14.3% (down from 16.5%) and traditional retail banks 10.8% (down from 13.1%). TransUnion notes bank originations were modestly down year over year.

Commercial banks charged an average 11.90% APR on a 24-month personal loan in August 2026, according to the Federal Reserve's G.19 release of Oct. 7, 2026, up slightly from 11.86% in May 2026 and 11.36% in February 2026.

The annual average climbed from 9.38% in 2021 and 9.87% in 2022 to 11.87% in 2023 and a recent peak of 12.27% in 2024, then eased to 11.50% in 2025 (see the chart below). The quarterly series hit its all-time low of 8.73% in May 2022 and its post-2010 high of 12.49% in February 2024. The record is 19.21% in November 1981 (FRED series TERMCBPER24NS).

The same G.19 release shows why so many personal loans are used to refinance cards. Bank credit card accounts that were charged interest paid an average 22.36% APR in August 2026, and the average across all card accounts was 21.19%. The 24-month personal loan rate of 11.90% is roughly half that.

TransUnion's reports repeatedly describe personal loans as a tool for debt consolidation and refinancing. Neither TransUnion nor the Fed publishes a breakdown of what share of loans is used for that purpose, so this page does not give one.

Credit unions consistently price personal loans below banks. In the NCUA's rate survey for Dec. 26, 2025, a 36-month unsecured fixed-rate loan averaged 10.64% at credit unions versus 12.00% at banks (see the table below).

The gap has been steady: 10.75% versus 12.03% in March 2025, 10.74% versus 12.02% in June 2025, and 10.72% versus 12.06% in September 2025. Credit unions also made 14.3% of new personal loans in Q1 2026, per TransUnion. For more on the sector see credit union statistics.

3.81% of personal loan borrowers were 60 or more days past due in Q2 2026, up 44 basis points from 3.37% a year earlier and above the 3.18% of Q2 2019. The account-level rate rose 30 basis points to 3.33% (see the chart and table below).

Measured by dollars, the picture is calmer. The balance-level 60+ day delinquency rate improved slightly to 1.95% from 1.99%. Because subprime borrowers carry small loans, a rising share of late borrowers adds relatively few delinquent dollars. In Q4 2025 the borrower-level rate had reached 3.99%, up from 3.57% a year before, the largest annual increase since early 2023.

Subprime borrowers are where late payments concentrate. TransUnion put the subprime consumer-level delinquency rate at 13.6% in Q2 2025, down from 14.4% in Q2 2024. Its Q2 2026 deck adds that recent subprime loan vintages are performing better than the 2021 to 2022 cohorts, and flags the resumption of federal student loan payments as a pressure on the non-prime borrowers driving growth.

Personal loans are a small slice of what households owe. The NY Fed's Q2 2026 Household Debt and Credit report puts total household debt at $18.8 trillion. Personal loans sit inside its "other" category, which also includes retail cards and other consumer finance loans, and which totaled $568 billion, up $6 billion in the quarter.

By TransUnion's count, the $281 billion in unsecured personal loans is about a quarter of the $1.14 trillion in bank credit card balances. In the Fed's G.19 data, total nonrevolving consumer credit (which includes auto, student and personal loans) was $3.84 trillion in August 2026.

The Federal Reserve's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), published May 2026 and covering 2025, shows how rarely people reach for a loan first. Among adults who struggled to pay bills in the prior month (28% of adults), 6% took out a payday or personal loan, compared with 48% who cut back on other spending and 23% who used a credit card they would pay over time.

Asked how they would cover an unexpected $400 expense, 63% of adults said cash or its equivalent, and only 3% said a bank loan or line of credit. Credit access is also tighter than it was: 33% of adults applied for any credit in 2025, the fewest since the question began in 2015, and about one-third of applicants were denied or approved for less than they asked for (see the table below). These are survey responses, not credit-file data.

Aggregate numbers describe the market, not any one household. Walnut, an AI investing app, can read a connected brokerage account and show how that money is doing, which some people look at alongside what they owe.