Confidence in the US equipment finance market in March was the highest level of business confidence among senior executives of equipment finance companies in four years, according to US group the Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation.
Confidence was indexed at 72.1 by Foundation in March through the monthly confidence index for the equipment finance industry (MCI-EFI), a significant increase compared to the February index of 66.3.
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The survey uses the same pool of 50 US organisation leaders to respond monthly to a set of questions.
When asked to assess their business conditions over the next four months, 50% of respondents said that they believe business conditions will improve over the next four months, up from 30.3% in February. The rest believe business condition will remain the same over this period.
41.7% of the executives believe demand for leases and loans to fund capital expenditures will increase over the next four months, down from 42.4% in February. No one believes demand will decline, as the rest anticipate demand to ‘remain the same’.
In addition, 70.8% of the survey respondents reported that they expect to hire more employees over the next four months, which was a large increase compared to February’s figure (39.4%).
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By GlobalDataWhen asked about the outlook for the future, MCI-EFI survey respondent Harry Kaplun, president at Frost Equipment Leasing and Finance, said: "Equipment financing demand is continuing although there are increasing clouds of uncertainty. In particular the full impact of lower oil prices has not been seen. This favorable event for consumers has a mixed impact commercially."
