What the CapEx Finance Index Measures
The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s Monthly Leasing and Finance Index, known for years as the MLFI-25, surveys 25 companies representing a cross-section of the roughly $1 trillion US equipment finance sector. It tracks five things every month: new business volume, receivables aging, charge-offs, credit approval ratios, and headcount, giving a fuller operational read on the sector than a single volume number would.
Starting September 2024, ELFA rebranded the index as the CapEx Finance Index, or CFI. The rebrand changed the name, not the underlying survey panel or methodology, so historical MLFI-25 data and current CFI data are drawn from the same continuous measurement.
Why This Index Is a Genuine Leading Indicator
The CapEx Finance Index is released one day before the Commerce Department’s own durable-goods report, which makes it the only near-real-time index of US commercial equipment-financing volume available ahead of that federal data. For anyone trying to read where business capital-equipment spending is heading before the government’s own number confirms it, this index is the earliest disclosed-methodology signal available.
That timing advantage is exactly why the index is worth tracking directly rather than waiting for secondary coverage to summarize it weeks later.
What the Most Recent Confirmed Read Says
ELFA’s own site references a June 2026 CapEx Finance Index report headlined “Demand Rebounds and Continues Upward Trend,” confirming the index was live and actively published as of that month, with equipment-financing demand moving in a positive direction. This page’s research pass could not extract the underlying year-over-year percentage, credit-approval-ratio, or delinquency figures from that report’s full text, so no specific number is repeated here as though it were current.
That headline framing, demand rebounding and trending upward, is real and directly quoted from ELFA’s own reporting. The exact magnitude behind it is not repeated here because it could not be independently confirmed this pass, and a stale percentage is worse than no percentage at all.
Why Equipment Finance Matters to an MCA Broker Specifically
This is reasoning, not a separately cited statistic. Equipment-heavy industries, trucking, construction, restaurants replacing kitchen equipment, are among the same verticals that repeatedly show up as classic MCA-heavy business types. A merchant in one of these industries weighing a piece of equipment they need is frequently also weighing MCA capital as one of several ways to fund it, alongside a dedicated equipment-finance product.
Understanding where equipment-finance demand is trending, even directionally, gives a broker working these verticals useful context for a conversation that is often really about a specific piece of equipment, not capital in the abstract.
How Equipment-Loan Approval Odds Compare With MCA’s Own
The CapEx Finance Index measures the equipment-finance industry’s own volume, not approval rates for an individual applicant. For that comparison, the Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey already tracks auto and equipment loans as a distinct product category: a 71% full-approval rate in 2025, the highest of any product type the survey tracks, well above MCA’s own 48% full-approval rate in the same survey.
That gap is a real part of why a merchant weighing a specific piece of equipment often has a genuinely easier approval path through a dedicated equipment loan than through MCA capital, even before cost enters the conversation, and it is worth naming honestly to a merchant who is really asking about one machine, not capital in the abstract.
How to Read the Live Index Instead of a Stale Number
Because the CapEx Finance Index publishes monthly, any specific percentage cited here would likely already be outdated by the time this page is read. The reliable way to use this index is to pull the current month’s report directly from ELFA’s own knowledge hub, where the same five metrics, new business volume, receivables aging, charge-offs, credit approval ratios, and headcount, are reported fresh each month against the same 25-company panel this page describes.
The Numbers
The CapEx Finance Index (formerly the MLFI-25) surveys 25 companies representing a cross-section of the roughly $1 trillion US equipment finance sector.
ELFA, Monthly Leasing and Finance Index / CapEx Finance Index hub
The index tracks new business volume, receivables aging, charge-offs, credit approval ratios, and headcount, and is released one day before the Commerce Department’s durable-goods report.
ELFA, Monthly Leasing and Finance Index / CapEx Finance Index hub
The index was rebranded from the MLFI-25 to the CapEx Finance Index (CFI) starting September 2024, with no change to the underlying survey panel.
ELFA, Monthly Leasing and Finance Index / CapEx Finance Index hub
ELFA’s June 2026 CapEx Finance Index report is headlined “Demand Rebounds and Continues Upward Trend,” confirming the index remains live and actively published in 2026.
Auto and equipment loans carried a 71% full-approval rate in the 2025 Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey, the highest of any product type tracked, versus MCA’s own 48% full-approval rate.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- ELFA, Monthly Leasing and Finance Index / CapEx Finance Index hub
- Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey, via deBanked