According to the Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation’s August Monthly Confidence Index for the Equipment Finance Industry (MCI-EFI), overall, confidence in the equipment finance market is 50.4, an increase from the July index of 46.4.
“In the past three years, our industry was directly affected by three major issues: COVID, the unprecedented speed and size of Fed rate hikes, and the unexpected fallout from deposit stickiness in the banking industry. After each occurrence, the confidence index for our industry dropped and then after a few months started to recover,” Mike Rooney, CEO of Verdant Commercial Capital, said. “What this tells us is that we aren’t immune to these strong forces, but after they happen, our industry reacts and finds a way to deal with them. This past resilience and agility are what give me confidence in the near-term future of our industry. There remain macro forces out there that we cannot control which could potentially impact every industry. These include an escalation of the war in Ukraine, further aggressive rate moves by the Fed and the potential crisis involving loan refinancing for commercial office buildings. All of these are big unknowns, but if the past is a guidepost for the future, our industry will find a way to succeed.”