What do We Finance?

The study released in December 2007 using 2006 numbers for equipment financing shows us who finances (previous post). The study was conducted by Global Insight and entitled 'The US Equipment Finance Market Study' and the results were published in the Jan/Feb 08 issue of The Monitor.

Besides showing us who finances in the 600 billion dollar equipment finance market, the study teaches us some other things too.

What equipment types relied most heavily on financing? The # 1 type is trucks and trailers. The order:

1) Trucks and Trailers
2) Construction Equipment
3) Industrial Equipment
4) Office Equipment

While the equipment types financed are very broad, who finances is more concentrated than we thought. The top 5 states (California, Texas, NY, FL and Illinois) represented 37% of the entire US market.

The other groundbreaking piece in this study was evidence that financing is used all up and down industries and markets including being used by manufacturers in the creation of a product, distributors of that product, dealers of that product and end use customers of the product. Therefore, its use is much more accepted and mainstream than we may have thought.