CHICAGO -

The most recent TransUnion financial hardship survey conducted in late October pinpointed how short of funds individuals and families financially impacted by the pandemic are toward meeting their monthly obligations.

According to the online survey of 3,100 adults conducted by TransUnion in partnership with third-party provider Qualtrics Research Services, these households land $886.70 short of keeping up with line items such as installment contracts for vehicles, a mortgage or rent, utilities and other necessities.

The TransUnion survey also highlighted the top six specific reasons why. They included:

— I own a small business that closed/orders dried up: 16%

— I’ve lost my job: 19%

— I/we relied on part-time job to supplement income: 18%

— Partner lost job/reduced work hours: 25%

— My work hours have been reduced: 42%

— Other: 13%

Among the participants, 24% told TransUnion they would not be able to maintain their vehicle payments. That reading is lower than other categories such as credit cards (38%), utilities (35%) and mobile phone bill (30%).

To pay bills and loans, TransUnion reported 32% of impacted consumers state they plan to use money from savings. The latest installment of the survey also showed borrowing money from family and friends remains flat at 23%.

When further broken down, TransUnion noted that 53% plan to borrow from friends, 51% from parents, 44% from other family members and 22% from a crowdfunding site.

TransUnion went on to mention that consumers continue to indicate they will rely on credit to pay their bills and loans at the highest levels of this study. One-fifth plan to use credit cards or balance transfers, 16% plan to take out personal loans and 13% intend to open new credit card.

With such a high volume of consumers currently navigating financial challenges, DRN recently reiterated in a company blog post about how it’s trying to help finance companies with its data before a vehicle repossession becomes necessary.

Strategic account manager Jared Kirby recapped that one of DRN’s first enterprise clients was a large captive finance company.

“They were long-time users of DRNsights’ vehicle location data in their repossession processes but wanted to brainstorm how they might use it pre-repo to make better repo decisions,” Kirby wrote.

“We partnered with this client to pull DRN data into their behavioral scoring model to help them make better decisions on if and when to repossess vehicles. We started by looking at a handful of accounts that were nearing repo stage and saw that some had very consistent license plate scans,” he continued. “This makes those vehicles easy to find and, in some cases, meant this lender could easily contact the borrower and secure payments or create payment arrangements.

“This is always a better outcome than repo — the borrower stays in their car and the lender receives its payments and avoids a costly repossession,” Kirby went on to note.