Truist is exiting near-prime auto lending, selling $5.5 billion in loans to Apollo

Truist Financial Corporation agreed on September 15, 2026 to sell $5.5 billion in auto loans — substantially all of the assets held by its Regional Acceptance Corporation subsidiary — to Apollo Global Management, marking the bank’s exit from near-prime auto lending. The deal is expected to close in the third or fourth quarter of 2026.

Near-prime auto lending — financing for borrowers with credit profiles just below prime — has been a segment under pressure across the industry as delinquencies have run higher than in prime auto portfolios, and exiting it removes a specific pocket of credit risk from Truist’s balance sheet rather than a broad retreat from consumer lending generally. Truist expects the sale to generate approximately $5.2 billion in net proceeds along with a $535 million recapture of loan-loss reserves that had been set aside against the RAC portfolio.

The capital impact is the headline number for investors: Truist projects the transaction will create $945 million in common equity tier 1 (CET1) capital, the core buffer regulators and markets watch most closely for a bank’s ability to absorb losses. Freeing up that much capital gives Truist flexibility to redeploy toward other lending, share buybacks or its own risk-adjusted priorities under new CEO Michael Lyons, rather than continuing to fund a lending line the bank had decided to shed.

For Apollo, the purchase adds a large near-prime auto book to its credit and lending platforms — a segment the private-capital giant and its asset-based finance peers have increasingly moved into as traditional banks pull back from certain consumer-credit categories. The deal illustrates a broader pattern in 2026: banks trimming higher-risk consumer lending lines to strengthen capital ratios, while private-credit firms absorb that risk in exchange for the yield it carries.