SAN DIEGO, April 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Point Predictive, the leader in artificial intelligence solutions for consumer lending, today released its 2026 Auto Lending Fraud Trends Report. Drawing on more than 300 million historical applications representing $5 trillion in consumer loans, the report finds that auto lending fraud exposure has reached $10.4 billion, up from $9.2 billion the prior year and nearly five times the level measured in 2010.
First-party fraud, where borrowers or dealerships misrepresent information to lenders, accounts for 69% of the total exposure. The majority of fraud risk comes from borrowers using their own names who inflate their income, misrepresent their employment, use credit washing techniques, or apply with Credit Profile Numbers. Bust-out fraud, where individuals rapidly apply across multiple lenders to stockpile and monetize vehicles, is among the fastest-growing threats in the report.
“Lenders spent years building defenses around identity verification and third-party fraud, and those defenses worked. But criminals adapted,” said Frank McKenna, Co-Founder and Chief Fraud Strategist at Point Predictive. “Income and employment misrepresentation, credit washing, and bust-out schemes are soaring. At the same time, AI has arrived inside auto lending fraud. Fraudsters are generating synthetic paystubs, building deepfake identities, and using AI chatbots to file false disputes that strip legitimate negative items from their credit reports.”
Key findings from the report include:
- Income and employment misrepresentation accounts for 45% of total fraud exposure and grew 21% year over year.
- Bust-out fraud has grown 67% over five years, with organized rings exploiting multiple lender relationships simultaneously to acquire and resell vehicles.
- The Early Payment Default Risk Index sits at more than double its 2017 baseline, with more than 70% of early payment defaults containing evidence of origination fraud.
The report also details threats from coordinated bot attacks, AI-powered dealer cloning websites, and title washing schemes.
“This year’s report represents our largest analysis of auto lending fraud to date,” said Tim Grace, CEO of Point Predictive. “The scale of our consortium and proprietary risk data gives us visibility into fraud patterns that lenders’ own data simply cannot reveal. The honest question facing lenders is no longer whether a document looks real. It is whether they can verify an application without relying on the document at all. That is what our consortium of more than 650 financial institutions makes possible, helping lenders approve good borrowers faster while stopping the fraud no single institution could detect alone.”
Point Predictive helps lenders and dealers combat these threats through its suite of solutions. AutoPass™ scores every application and returns more than 150 data risk attributes and alerts, allowing lenders to automate up to 80% of lending decisions while helping to prevent up to 40% to 60% of early payment defaults. DealerCheck™ provides AI-powered dealer risk scoring across more than 68,000 active profiles. BorrowerCheck™ protects against first- and third-party fraud at the point of sale. And IEValidate® True Income and Employment validates income and employment instantly, catching fake employers and forged paystubs.
The 2026 Auto Lending Fraud Trends Report is available now at landing.pointpredictive.com/2026-fraud-trends-report
For more information, contact info@pointpredictive.com.
About Point Predictive
Point Predictive powers a new level of lending confidence and speed through artificial intelligence, powerful data insight from our proprietary data repository, and decades of risk management expertise. The company’s data and technology solutions quickly and accurately identify truthful and untruthful disclosures on loan applications. As a result, lenders can fund the majority of loans without requiring onerous documentation, such as paystubs, utility bills, or bank statements, improving funding rates while reducing early payment default losses. Subsequently, borrowers get loans faster, and lenders realize a more profitable bottom line. For more information, please visit pointpredictive.com.
Media Contact: Jordan Zane, Jzane@PointPredictive.com
