CINCINNATI -

Lease credit approvals on Swapalease.com decelerated a tad in the final two months of the year — similar to prior years — but still finished 2015 with a “healthy” approval rate of 70 percent, the company said in an analysis released Thursday.

And much like the overall auto industry, lease approvals on the site were still up from prior years. The full-year approval rate for 2014 was 69 percent.

The company said in the analysis that the moving 12-month average had peaked at 77.9 percent in August, but declined following modest dips in November and December.

That also paralleled consumer borrowing trends in the overall economy. Citing The Wall Street Journal, Swapalease said the revised annual rate of increase in outstanding consumer credit during November (4.8 percent) was a 10-month low.

“For what could be a variety of reasons, lease credit approvals have slowed down at year end over the last few years,” said Scot Hall, executive vice president at Swapalease. “Looking ahead into the spring, it will be interesting to see if we experience the same level of monthly volatility as we have the past few years.”

For the time being, the 70-percent mark reached in 2015 hits what Swapalease called the “sweet spot for ‘healthy.’” Typically, the “unhealthy” fault line would be 62 percent, the company said.