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Vintage Analysis Calculator

Track deal performance by funding cohort to identify trends in underwriting quality over time.

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What Is Vintage Analysis?

Vintage analysis groups deals by the month they were funded and tracks each group's performance independently. This reveals whether your underwriting quality is improving, stable, or deteriorating over time. Aggregate portfolio metrics can mask vintage-specific problems -- a portfolio with 90% overall collection rate may have January deals collecting at 95% and July deals at only 82%. Without vintage analysis, you would not know that recent deals are performing worse. In MCA, vintage analysis is the standard analytical framework used by institutional investors, syndicators, and sophisticated ISOs to evaluate portfolio health. It answers the critical question: is the book getting better or worse?

How to Use This Calculator

1

Enter cohort data for 3 funding months

Select representative months and enter the number of deals and collection percentage for each. Use completed or near-completed cohorts for the most meaningful comparison.

2

Compare across vintages

The calculator identifies the best and worst performing vintage and determines whether the trend is improving, stable, or deteriorating.

3

Investigate deteriorating vintages

If recent vintages are performing worse, drill down: did you change funder relationships? Start accepting lower-quality merchants? Increase stacking? The vintage trend points to the timeframe; you need to identify the cause.

Key Concepts

Vintage

A cohort of deals funded in the same month. Each vintage is tracked independently to isolate time-period-specific performance from the overall portfolio.

Vintage Curve

A chart showing collection rates for each vintage over time. Healthy vintages show rising collection rates that plateau near 90-95%. Unhealthy vintages show flat or declining collection rates.

Vintage Deterioration

When more recent vintages perform worse than older vintages. This is the most important early warning signal in portfolio management -- it means something changed in deal quality.

Expert Insights

Monthly Vintage Tracking Is Non-Negotiable: If you fund from your own capital or participate in syndication, monthly vintage tracking is the most important analytical practice you can implement. It takes 30 minutes per month to update and can save you from a portfolio blow-up that costs hundreds of thousands. The pattern: vintage deterioration goes unnoticed for 3-4 months, then defaults spike, then it is too late to prevent. Monthly tracking gives you the 3-4 month warning window to tighten underwriting.

Compare Vintages to Market Conditions: Vintage performance is affected by both your underwriting quality AND market conditions. If all vintages funded during a particular quarter underperform, it may reflect market-wide stress rather than your specific underwriting. Compare your vintage performance to industry benchmarks and other portfolios (if accessible) to distinguish between your-specific and market-wide effects.

Frequently Asked Questions

At least 10-15 deals per vintage for patterns to be statistically meaningful. Below 10, a single default can swing the collection rate by 10+ percentage points, making it hard to distinguish signal from noise. If you fund fewer than 10 deals per month, use quarterly vintages instead of monthly.
Recent vintages (last 3-6 months) show lower collection rates at the same age compared to older vintages. For example, if January deals were at 85% collected after 4 months but July deals are at 78% after 4 months, that is deterioration. The shape of the curve (flattening early) also indicates trouble -- deals that should still be collecting have stopped.
Tighten underwriting standards (reject merchants you would have accepted), reduce stacking, improve pre-submission verification (bank statement analysis, UCC searches), and shift deal mix toward lower-risk profiles. Track whether the changes improve subsequent vintage performance. It typically takes 2-3 months to see the impact of underwriting changes in vintage data.

Results are estimates for educational purposes only. Actual amounts may vary based on your specific financial situation, market conditions, and other factors. This calculator does not constitute financial advice.

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