(Reuters) -Wall Street’s biggest banks kicked off third-quarter earnings by highlighting the resilience of U.S. consumers and added that credit has shown no cracks so far despite higher rates and economic uncertainty.
Large lenders provide a window into consumer health because their lending, credit card activity and deposit flows reflect how households are spending, borrowing and managing debt.
The remarks are especially significant as the U.S. government shutdown delays the release of key data normally used to gauge the health of the economy.
Here is an overview of what Wall Street’s top banking executives said:
JPMORGAN’S CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER JEREMY BARNUM IN A CALL WITH ANALYSTS:
“The current facts on the consumer side is that the consumer is resilient, spending is strong, and delinquency rates are actually coming in below expectations. So those are facts that we really can’t escape.”
“Consumers and small businesses remain resilient based on our data. While we are closely watching the potentially softening labor market, our credit metrics, including early-stage delinquencies, remain stable and slightly better than expected.”
BANK OF AMERICA’S CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER ALASTAIR BORTHWICK IN A CALL WITH ANALYSTS:
“We had a modest reserve release associated with improved outlooks for both credit card and commercial real estate. Focusing on total net charge-offs again and looking forward, in the near term, we would not expect much change in total net charge-offs given the steady consumer delinquency trends, stability of C&I and reductions in CRE exposures.”
CITIGROUP’S CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER MARK MASON IN A CALL WITH ANALYSTS:
“I think consumers are being very discerning in terms of how they spend. The spend increase that we’ve seen is largely in branded that has tended to be in the higher income consumers. And I think, importantly, when I look at the delinquency trends, the delinquency trends are also performing in a very normal fashion in terms of early buckets.”
WELLS FARGO’S CFO MIKE SANTOMASSIMO IN A CALL WITH JOURNALISTS:
“Customer activity in the quarter remained solid, including increased credit card and debit card spend. The credit trends are quite, quite good. Activity levels continue to be strong.”
“It (credit quality) was strong across the board, and I think it’s been very consistent now with what we’ve been seeing.”
WELLS FARGO CEO CHARLIE SCHARF IN A CALL WITH ANALYSTS:
“Strong consumer spend and stable deposits and those things just kind of paint a picture of a consistently strong consumer, even though what you read about is — it would lead you to believe that they’re being more cautious, our results just say that there’s a high degree of consistency there without any real pockets of (slowing).”
(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil, Pritam Biswas, Prakhar Srivastava and Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar, Tatiana Bautzer, Nupur Anand in New York; Compiled by Manya Saini; Editing by Alan Barona)
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