Every month, the trusts that securitize equipment loans file a distribution report with the SEC — Form 10-D, a servicer's accounting of how the loan pool is actually performing. Almost nobody reads them. We parsed 3,351 of them, covering 95 securitization trusts from two of the largest captive equipment lenders in America, with vintages spanning 2006 through 2026.
The headline finding is one every equipment lender — including anyone building a robotics financing program — should sit with: the loans being originated right now are performing worse, at every age checkpoint, than any cohort since the 2015–16 agricultural recession. And the aggregate statistics most credit committees watch haven't registered it yet.
What the vintage curves show
A "vintage curve" tracks cumulative net losses for all loans originated in a given year, measured by months on book. It's the cleanest way to compare credit quality across origination periods, because it compares cohorts at the same age rather than mixing seasoned and fresh loans the way an aggregate delinquency rate does.
Across one major agricultural/construction equipment shelf, the 2023 vintage had reached roughly 0.52% cumulative net loss by month 24 — versus 0.05% for the 2021 vintage at the same age. On a second, independent captive shelf, the 2024 vintage hit about 0.32% by month 12, versus 0.06% for its 2021 cohort. Two different lenders, two different underwriting shops, same shape: post-2022 originations are deteriorating several times faster than the pandemic-era cohorts they replaced.
For context, the worst vintages in the twenty-year record — 2015 and 2016, originated into the farm-income downturn — topped out around 1.3% lifetime cumulative net loss. The 2023 cohort is not there yet, but it is tracking a path that rhymes, and it has not finished seasoning: in equipment pools, most losses accrue between months 12 and 36, because repossession and remarketing resolve much faster than, say, an SBA workout.
Why the aggregates look fine
The Federal Reserve's delinquency rate on lease financing receivables at commercial banks — the closest thing to a public equipment-credit health gauge — printed 1.16% for Q1 2026, sitting at roughly the 43rd percentile of its history since 1987. Benign. Mid-cycle. Nothing to see.
Both things are true, and that's the point. Aggregate rates blend every vintage on the book: the pristine 2020–21 cohorts are still large, still seasoned, and still diluting the newer paper. Vintage-level deterioration shows up in aggregates only after the weak cohorts grow into a dominant share of the portfolio — typically four to eight quarters after the underwriter could have seen it in the cohort data.
What this means if you're financing robots in 2026
Robotics is becoming a financeable asset class at precisely a mid-deterioration entry point for equipment credit broadly. Three practical implications:
- Underwrite with the stress case live, not the aggregate. The twenty-year record from these shelves says crisis-vintage cohorts run roughly 3–5× the cumulative losses of neighboring good-year vintages. If your robot-program pricing works only at 2021-style loss rates, it doesn't work.
- Expect losses early, not late. Pool losses in equipment paper concentrate in years one through three — front-loaded relative to broader small-business credit. Reserve accordingly, and set advance rates against where the collateral's resale value sits at months 36–60, not at origination.
- Well-collateralized equipment credit is still, historically, very good credit. Even the worst vintage in twenty years lost about 1.3% cumulatively — these are low-loss books by consumer or unsecured-commercial standards. The lesson isn't to avoid the asset class; it's that origination timing and collateral discipline are most of the game.
We'll be tracking these vintage curves quarterly, alongside the robot-specific price and value data we collect weekly, in The Robotics Lendscape.
Sources & method: Pexara analysis of 3,351 SEC Form 10-D distribution reports (Exhibit 99.1) filed by 95 equipment securitization trusts of two captive lenders, vintages 2006–2026, retrieved from SEC EDGAR July 2026. Cumulative net loss = life-to-date net losses as a percentage of initial pool balance as reported by each servicer; vintage figures are trust-averages compared at equal months-on-book. Aggregate delinquency: Federal Reserve series DRLFRACBS via FRED, Q1 2026. Pre-2010 trusts deregister after roughly one year of public reporting, so early-vintage curves are shallower than post-2010 ones. Figures are pool-level, not loan-level; delinquency (as opposed to net-loss) comparisons across shelves are not presented because reporting definitions differ.