Big banks report big loans in Q1
The first batch of earnings reports from big banks shows lending is on the rise, a sign businesses and consumers are feeling better about the economy
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US equities were relatively stable Tuesday as investors enjoyed a break from back-to-back tariff headlines and digested a batch of positive bank earnings.
Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Bank of America reported this week. A couple data points of note:
Banks don’t seem worried about potential loan and lease losses
In some cases, they’re actually holding less — like Goldman Sachs, which set aside $287 million in credit loss provisions during Q1, compared to $351 million in Q4 2024. The Bank of New York Mellon also decreased its provisions from $20 million in Q4 to $18 million in Q1.
Citigroup increased its credit loss allowance by 1% from the last quarter of 2024. Bank of America also posted a mild increase in Q1, allotting $13.26 billion for defaults vs. $13.21 billion at the end of last year.
Why does this matter? Banks are not expecting a huge increase in loan defaults, meaning they imagine consumers will be healthy and/or they see their risk controls working. All good news.
Of course, defaults lag economic stress, so grain of salt. What I mean is that should tariffs, market volatility, and/or generally-worse economic conditions lead to an increase in loan defaults, it might take a while before we see this materialize — both in losses and in increased loss allowances.
Lending is up
Big banks’ loan balances are increasing.
Goldman Sachs reported $210 billion in loans during Q1, up from $196 billion in Q4 2024.
Bank of America’s Q1 loans came in at $1.1 trillion, up almost 6% year over year. The bank reported quarter-over-quarter increases in both consumer and commercial lending.
Citibank’s lending was up as well, coming in at $702 billion (a 4% increase from the first quarter of 2024). But net credit losses in Q1 were up too, showing a 7% increase year over year.
Why does this matter? Again, it speaks to the health of consumers and businesses. When things are good, businesses want to expand and consumer spending increases given confidence they can pay back what they borrow.
Again, grain of salt here. A rise in defaults is bad. Plus, increased commercial lending last quarter could be a reflection of businesses looking to get ahead of tariffs by increasing working capital or taking out loans to make supply chain changes.
All in all, though, big bank earnings are off to a pretty solid start. Looking ahead at earnings season more broadly, there’s one other thing we are keeping an eye on, thanks to DataTrek Research’s Nicholas Colas. He made an excellent point on quarterly cost accruals in a note yesterday: Many companies have some leeway in how and when they report cost accruals.
Intentionally increasing reported expenses (accruals) in a quarter where profits were especially high could be advantageous in times where the market is down and expectations for exceptional earnings are low (times like right now). These extra earnings can be “saved,” if you will, for a later quarter when investors will reward better performance.
Colas says looking at how much companies beat on expectations will give us clues into profitability and management confidence. We’ll be watching.
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