Macroeconomic forecasting and regional trends - February 2025

While the U.S. economy continues to outperform expectations, the labor market remains solid and consumers are well-positioned, there remain a few challenges ahead in 2025 that could cloud the economic outlook including potential inflationary pressures and continued affordability issues in the housing market. As these trends play out over the course of the year, businesses must stay on top of the latest economic developments.

Experian’s Chief UK Economist Mohammed Chaudhri’s latest report shares his forecast for the rest of the year and beyond with insights into the latest economic trends and developments.

In this episode, we discuss the growing economic crosswinds affecting small businesses, recent employment trends, consumer spending patterns, and the impressive growth of minority-owned businesses in the U.S. We highlight the challenges and opportunities these businesses face, particularly in accessing needed capital.

📌 41% of new commercial accounts are minority-owned, yet access to capital remains a barrier.

📌 44% of minority-owned businesses are less than six years old, showing strong entrepreneurial momentum.

📌 Industries like retail, construction, and healthcare are fueling this expansion.

For lenders, this represents an untapped market and a business opportunity with high growth potential.

Check out the full report to see how these trends could impact your strategy!

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Key themes and emerging trends shaping financial services in 2025, using research and insight from leading industry analysts. Themes include:

• Fraud evolution driven by AI
  
• AI will play a transformative role in banking
  
• Emergence of RegTech
  
• Convergence of risk management

While all eyes are on the impact of tariffs, immigration policy, and other proposals coming out of the new administration, the five key trends that I’ll be watching in 2025 have been playing out over the last couple of years and will be important to how the economy and lending market unfolds in the year ahead.

Trends include:

• The slowdown in the “white-collar” job market
• The stabilization of consumer delinquency
• The letting up of lending standard tightening