Card Charge-Offs and Delinquencies Fall in February at Major Issuers

Five of the largest credit card issuers in the United States late last week reported lower delinquency rates for February in their securitized pool summaries filed with the SEC. Most also reported lower net chargeoff rates.

The delinquency rates for Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citigroup, and Discover all fell in February and the average card delinquency rate among the five slipped below 3 percent to 2.97 percent. Delinquency rates are expressed as the percentage of accounts in a securitized pool that are 30 days or more behind payment.

Net charge-off rates also declined, on average.  Only Citigroup and Discover reported slight increases in their net charge-offs for February. The other three banks reported declines, pushing the average charge-off rate to 4.19 percent in the month. The net charge-off rates for credit cards reported by the banks are expressed as the percentage of total accounts written off as uncollectible minus collections and other payments received during the month from external collection activity.