# What are private credit default rates running at now?

The headline number is a record: Fitch put the US private-credit default rate at **6.1%** for the twelve months to July 2026, which its own release describes as remaining at a record high. It was 6.0% in April and 5.6% in December, so it has climbed through the year. But how you read it depends entirely on what counts as a "default."

Of Fitch's April events, ~55% were **PIK / interest deferral** (the borrower stops paying cash interest and rolls it into the loan), ~35% were **maturity extensions under stress**, and only ~6% were **bankruptcy or liquidation**. So roughly **9 in 10 are stress restructurings**, not companies dying. Moody's reads 2025 the same way (~65% distressed restructurings). Fitch counts by number of defaulters, not dollars, so scale is invisible - and the books split: the insurer-facing PMR book runs ~9.7% versus ~4.8% for the CLO book.

Bulls (S&P Global) note that stripping out selective defaults leaves the rate near 4.4% with resilient fundamentals. Same loans, two stories - which is the whole fight. Full sourced breakdown: [https://www.tigzig.com/post/private-credit-market-for-lemons-may2026](https://www.tigzig.com/post/private-credit-market-for-lemons-may2026). Live credit data: [https://www.tigzig.com/tremor](https://www.tigzig.com/tremor). Hub: [https://www.tigzig.com/private-credit](https://www.tigzig.com/private-credit).

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Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar
Source: https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/private-credit-default-rates-now
Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar.
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