Epiq released its October 2021 bankruptcy filing statistics from its AACER bankruptcy information services business. October new filings for all chapters increased 1.8 percent to 31,471, up from 30,920 in September 2021.
Total Commercial Chapter 11 filings in October increased by 21.1 percent with a total of 293, compared to 242 new filings in September 2021. As a subset of the total new Chapter 11 commercial filings, Chapter 11 Subchapter V filings were up 16.7 percent with 84 new filings, compared to 72 new filings in September 2021.
Total individual Chapter 13 filings were up 8.6 percent over September, with 10,764 new filings compared to 9,909 filings in September 2021. Total individual Chapter 7 filings were down 1.9 percent over September, with 18,874 new filings compared to 19,942 in the prior month.
“Although October had one less business day than September, October 2021 filings were up 1.8 percent month-over-month. However, new filings remain significantly lower than the comparable pre-COVID number of 67,878 for all chapter new filings in October 2019,” said Chris Kruse, Senior Vice President of Epiq AACER.
Chapter 13 individual filings increased for the fifth consecutive month, growing 33 percent since May 2021 when 8,079 new cases were filed. However, these filing rates remain 55 percent below the comparable 23,688 pre-COVID new filings in October 2019.