Federal Reserve FEDS Notes·Oct 16, 2026, 10:25 AM ET

Introducing Private Credit into the Financial Accounts of the United States

Private credit is defined as privately negotiated loans to businesses originated by nonbank investment funds rather than traditional banks.
Beginning with the September 2026 release, the Financial Accounts of the United States now integrate private credit by adding new sectors for private credit vehicles & new tables for private credit loans & shares of private debt funds.
Assets under management in private credit vehicles grew from approximately $350 billion in 2012 to over $2.6 trillion as of 2025:Q4, with outstanding loans to U.S. businesses totaling about $1.5 trillion.
U.S.-domiciled private credit vehicles had $1.9 trillion in assets under management as of 2025:Q4, with private debt funds & business development companies (BDCs) holding nearly half of total loans each.
Prior to integration, U.S.-domiciled private credit vehicles were not separate sectors, causing their assets & liabilities to be missing or incorrectly attributed to other sectors like households or foreign entities.
The new framework adds private debt funds, BDCs, interval & tender offer funds as new sectors, while middle-market CLOs are incorporated into the existing asset-backed securities sector.
Two new financial instruments are introduced: private credit loans & shares of private debt funds, enabling tracking of the full intermediation chain from investors to borrowers.
Private credit loans now account for approximately 6% of total nonfinancial business debt, up from about 1% in 2012.
The inclusion of private credit raises the nonfinancial business debt-to-GDP ratio by roughly 5 percentage points in recent years but does not substantially alter the overall declining trend since 2020.
Household net worth is now measured more accurately as the integration reallocates assets previously misattributed to households & captures direct household holdings of private debt fund shares.
Private debt fund shares are primarily held by public & private pension funds (over 40%), life insurers (14%), & households & nonprofits (23%).
The integration relies on confidential SEC Form PF data, BDC Collateral data, Moody's CLO database, & other sources to construct comprehensive balance sheets for private credit vehicles.