Nonmortgage consumer credit (credit card and installment debt) began to be securitized in the late 1980s, and in recent years more than 20 percent of the outstanding stock has been securitized. Until the summer of 2007, there was very strong demand for securitized credit from mutual funds, pension funds, and other institutional investors.
Throughout that period, household wealth was rising rapidly, and, directly or indirectly, households were allocating an increasing share of their wealth to vehicles that were managed or advised by professional asset managers. At the same time, advances in the technology of modeling, pricing, and trading of risk over the past several decades gave added impetus to the migration of credit to securities markets.