The Institutional Risk Analyst

In the second quarter of 2026, Morgan Stanley’s margin and other lending balances increased by $3.0 billion (or 9%) sequentially compared to the first quarter. Year-over-year, these loan balances surged by $10.3 billion (or 40%).

One reason that we believe that consumer loss rates are so low is that more aggressive lenders like HAPN and many others are ready and willing to provide unsecured financing to consumers. Given the signs of stress we see building in the private residential loan channel, we'd be more inclined to take the short side of HAPN -- especially if they are so anxious to take risk in home improvement lending.

Len Tannenbaum, founder of Tannenbaum Capital, told Bloomberg's Carrol Massar that some BDCs could buckle as the pressure mounts, depending on how leveraged they are, their overall exposure to troubled loans and “how long they’ve swept things under the rug” using such methods as "payment in kind" or PIK to avoid default. “PIK is POOP — Principal On Outstanding Principal — and it doesn’t matter how much, POOP smells,” Tannenbaum said.

Consumers and policy makers will probably be surprised to learn how imprecise the world of aggregating consumer data remains in 2026, almost 40 years since the first standardized consumer credit score, known as the FICO Score, was published in the United States in 1989. The fact that several new scores have been published by the aggregators of consumer data has not improved the situation appreciably. How can the consumer finance industry and the regulatory agencies get this r