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Banks did well because of deals, but traditional lending is a mixed bag

If the economy goes south, it could affect the ability of working people to continue making payments. And that could affect the banks’ bottom lines.

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JPMorgan Chase said loan volumes on its cards are up over the last year, a trend driven by strong consumer spending.
JPMorgan Chase said loan volumes on its cards are up over the last year, a trend driven by strong consumer spending.
Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images

It’s a big week for bank earnings. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup reported quarterly results on Tuesday; Bank of America and Morgan Stanley report on Wednesday.

Overall, banks are pulling in plenty of revenue — especially from their investment banking and trading departments. But the old-fashioned business of lending out money has been more of a mixed bag.

Lending, in general, was fairly muted in the most recent quarter, partly because there are a lot of businesses that are reluctant to take on more debt right now, per Tom Collins with the consulting company West Monroe.

“It’s companies that are especially rate-sensitive or potentially tariff-sensitive,” he said.

On the consumer side, Collins said there’s still a lot of hesitation around mortgages, thanks (again) to high interest rates. It’s the same story with home equity lines of credit.

“Rates have stayed high enough that it has not made economic sense for people to tap into that equity,” Collins said.

But one type of consumer credit that has been growing is credit cards. JPMorgan Chase said loan volumes on its cards are up over the last year. Part of the likely reason? Consumer spending has been picking up recently, according to Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

“Particularly in consumer discretionary spending — so things like travel, trips away, hotels — that’s where we’ve seen a big rebound in spending growth,” he said.

A lot of that spending is being driven by higher-income households, Pearce noted. Think older consumers who might own their homes or their own stock market portfolios.

“You know, really, the value of their portfolios is a huge determinant of how confident they’re feeling, of how much they feel they’re able to spend,” said Pearce. “We see when the stock market’s high and going higher, consumers opening their wallets.”

But Pearce added that there are plenty of people who are not feeling that confident. “The consumers where I think we’re seeing struggles, and continuing signs of struggles, those tend to be younger, more likely to be renters, those on lower and moderate incomes.”

As a result, some banks have been setting aside more money to cover loans that could go bad. That’s partly because lenders are concerned about the slowing labor market, according to Stephen Biggar, a bank analyst at Argus Research.

“So if consumers don’t have a job or have difficulty replacing one if they lose it, they tend to get late on their payments,” he said.

But while we have seen signs of stress among lower-income consumers, Biggar said that delinquencies and loan losses have been modest.

In other words, he said banks are not waving any red flags. “You know, maybe call them yellow flags at this point, instead of red flags. We’re just not seeing any big deterioration when you’re talking about the industry at large just yet.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that even though there’s still uncertainty around geopolitics, trade, and inflation, the economy is resilient.

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