The latest report from a pair of experts at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis included a question that could significantly impact finance companies and dealership F&I departments. The report was titled, “Student Loan Delinquency: A Big Problem Getting Worse?”

Senior economist Juan Sanchez and technical research associate Lijun Zhu found that the delinquency rate for federal student loans increased significantly during the past 10 years — from 11 percent to slightly above 17 percent. Sanchez and Zhu found delinquency was monotonically increasing before reaching 15.8 percent in 2010.

“Thus, about 77 percent of the increase over the past 10 years occurred between 2004 and 2010. The delinquency rate decreased during 2011 and then increased sharply during 2012. Since then it has remained quite stable at about 17 percent,” the St. Louis Fed experts wrote in the report posted here this week.

But here’s the rub and its possible impact on what finance company underwriters or F&I managers might spot when they pull credit reports for potential buyers who need vehicle financing and already have a student-loan burden.

Back during the fourth quarter of 2010 Sanchez and Zhu determined that about 45 percent of student loans were not in repayment, implying that only about 55 percent of student loans were in repayment.

“As a consequence, if we adjust the delinquency rate to consider that only a fraction of the borrowers have payments due, this level of delinquency is very concerning,” Sánchez and Zhu said.

“A delinquency rate of 15 percent for all student loan borrowers implies a delinquency rate of 27.3 percent for borrowers with loans in repayment,” they continued.

And in comparison to auto financing, that newly calculated delinquency rate for student loans is about 10 times higher than the 30-day delinquency rate Experian Automotive reported for the fourth quarter. Experian determined the reading to be 2.62 percent, nearly flat from a year earlier.