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Bankruptcies Continue Downward Trend

Epiq [1], an Atlanta-based provider of intelligence to the legal services industry, has released its January 2021 bankruptcy filing statistics from its AACER [2] subsidiary which found that filings declined by 6.4% last month representing 26,194 filings of all types, down from the 27,957 seen in December, and the 29,328 seen in November. 

Comparing data year-over-year from January 2021 to January 2022, bankruptcies fell by 16.5%, declining from 866,811 open cases in 2021 to 724,070 cases in 2022. 

Breaking the data down, Chapter 13 individual bankruptcies rose by 3.4% in January after two months of declines. January saw 10,336 new filings—this number is now down from December when 9,996 new filings were recorded. Year-over-year Chapter 13 filings were up 13.2% 

Chapter 7 individual bankruptcies were down in January with 14,304 new filings over 16,235 seen in December, a 11.9% decrease. 

However, Chapter 11 commercial filings saw 222 new filings, a decrease of 53.7% over December when 310 filings were recorded. It should be noted that an outlier occurred in December which skewed the results—one bankruptcy filing for Nordic Aviation Capital resulted in 112 individually filed cases, which explains the sharp uptick seen that month. 

“January 2022 new filings continue to be well below pre-pandemic levels,” said Chris Kruse [3], senior vice president of Epiq Bankruptcy Technology. “We are closely watching the Chapter 13 individual filings as this month reversed the prior three-month trend with a modest uptick in activity.”