Friday, April 24, 2026

Bank Earnings Season: What the Big Four Are Telling Us About the U.S. Economy

It's earnings release season and pundits are out in full force reading the tea leaves from banks in their coverage universe. I took a different approach.

I analyzed the earnings releases and the earnings calls of the U.S.'s top four banking companies: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. Together, they represent a hard-to-ignore $13.4 trillion of total assets.

I didn't do it to gauge these banks prospects. Instead, I did it to decipher their financial performance, condition, and their commentary on the U.S. economy and banking sector. Below is a summary of those four banks disclosures, aided by Copilot to help absorb a lot of information.

1. The U.S. Economy: Resilient, Not Reaccelerating

Unambiguous signal:
The U.S. economy in early 2026 is holding together better than feared, but it is not entering a new growth phase.

Across all four banks:

Consumers are still spending

Corporate balance sheets remain solid

Credit deterioration is limited and gradual

Confidence is cautious, not retreating

Yet no CEO described demand as accelerating. The language was consistent: “Resilient,” “stable,” “cautious,” “selective,” “uneven.”

It would be unusual for a financial institution to clamor about bubbles bursting or economic decline because that happens for multiple reasons, one of which is consumer and business confidence. Why buck the confidence game? The bankers' comments point to a late‑cycle soft‑landing environment rather than a boom or a slowdown cliff.

2. Where the U.S. Economy Is Strong

A. The U.S. Consumer (Top Half of Consumers Are Carrying the Load)

What banks see:

Debit and credit card spend volumes are still growing
Travel, leisure, and services spend remains firm
Wealth clients are active
Credit card losses are higher than cycle lows, but below stress thresholds

Important nuance from calls:

Wells Fargo and JPM both emphasized bifurcation
Upper‑income households and asset owners are fine
Lower‑income consumers are under pressure—but not yet cracked

Translation:
Aggregate data looks healthy because the top half of consumers is offsetting softness below. That’s sustainable for a while—but not indefinitely. The highly leveraged are vulnerable.

B. Corporate America: Balance‑Sheet Strength > Confidence

Across all four banks:

Investment‑grade borrowers dominate new lending
Revolver utilization remains below historical norms
Cash balances are solid
Debt issuance is active, especially in investment grade and term markets

What’s missing:

No surge in utilization
No capex boom
No hiring acceleration

Translation:
Firms are financially strong but waiting, not expanding aggressively. Volatile and changing government policies and priorities are keeping us in a hovering mode.

C. Financial System Health

This may be the strongest message of all.

CET1 ratios are strong across the board
Liquidity is abundant
Funding is stable
No signs of liquidity strain
Nonbank exposures (NBFI, private credit, fund financing) are actively monitored and structurally conservative. The fact they had to emphasize this makes me think there is something to the weakness in this lending.

Translation:
Whatever macro risks lie ahead, the U.S. banking system is well positioned to absorb them. At least much more so than 2008.

3. Where the U.S. Economy Is Weak or Vulnerable

A. Growth Is Narrow, Not Broad

Growth is currently relying on:

Consumer spending
Financial services activity
Capital markets normalization

It is not relying on:

Manufacturing boom
Wage acceleration
Productivity surge
Broad business investment

This makes the expansion slow and fragile, even if not imminently unstable.

B. Lower‑Income Consumer Stress Is Real (But Contained—for Now)

Multiple banks independently referenced:

Higher sensitivity to fuel and commodity prices
Thinner household and business financial buffers
More price elasticity in discretionary categories

Credit data has not yet turned sharply—but early warning signals are visible.

Translation:

This is not a recession signal—but it is a reminder that the consumer story rests on a narrower base than headline numbers imply. Bubbles bursting might be a recessionary signal, but air is slowly seeping from would-be bubbles, as it has in the commercial real estate and multi-family markets.

C. Rates Are a Double‑Edged Sword

Banks are no longer getting easy net-interest income lift from falling rates
Asset‑sensitive banks (WFC, BAC) are facing NIM compression
Rate cuts would help borrowers—but hurt bank earnings power particularly in under-valuing deposits
Higher‑for‑longer stabilizes income but pressures marginal borrowers

Translation:

Monetary policy is now distributional, not uniformly stimulative or restrictive. The 2Y Treasury is 3.83%, 10Y is 4.34%. Fed Funds, an overnight rate, sits between the 1Y and 2Y.

What the Four Banks Say About the U.S. Banking Sector

4. Sector Diagnosis: Strong, Profitable, but Entering a New Phase

The earnings collectively show the banking sector has moved from:

Post‑crisis repair → Post‑pandemic stabilization → Post‑rate‑hike normalization

We are now in a phase where:

Earnings are solid
Credit is manageable
Capital is abundant
Growth depends on execution, balance sheet and revenue mix, and discipline

This is not a leverage‑driven cycle. Which speaks to the ability of balance sheets to withstand recession.

5. Strengths of the U.S. Banking Sector

A. Capital & Liquidity Are Not the Constraint

Every bank emphasized:

Excess capital
Share buybacks
Ability to support clients in stress-although the temptation to abandon stressed clients is there
Regulatory clarity improving (Basel, G‑SIB)

This is the opposite of 2008 or 2020.

B. Credit Underwriting Is Conservative

Evidence across banks:

High share of investment‑grade exposure
Structural protections in NBFI lending
Sub‑60% advance rates in private credit
Limited CRE office exposure relative to system capital

The industry has learned—perhaps overly learned—the lessons of the last cycle.

C. Fee Businesses Are Doing the Heavy Lifting

An underappreciated macro point:

Payments, treasury services, asset management, and markets are now core earnings engines
This reduces dependence on rates
It stabilizes earnings across cycles

Citigroup’s Services and JPMorgan’s payments ecosystem are emblematic here. Community financial institutions can learn something here, stop talking about it, and start making the investments necessary for fee businesses to be a larger contributor to revenues and profitability.

6. Weaknesses and Structural Challenges

A. Earnings Are More Sensitive to Confidence Than Credit

Paradoxically, the biggest risk is not defaults—it’s activity.

Banks need:

Deal flow
Markets activity
Client engagement
Balance‑sheet utilization

A confidence shock—even without a deep recession—would hit earnings faster than credit losses because bank balance sheets are positioned for moderate credit shocks.

B. Margin Compression Is Structural

Net interest margins are no longer expanding easily.

Deposit betas are higher. As pricing becomes more transparent and money movement easier, this is unlikely to change.
Asset mix is shifting to lower‑yielding products
Competition is rational but real

This pushes banks toward:

Cost discipline
Fee growth
Balance‑sheet optimization

C. The Cycle Is Now About Sorting, Not Survival

The era when “banks move together” is over.

Strong franchises gain share
Execution matters more than a unique strategy
Management and markets remain key ingredients

Bottom‑Line Interpretation

What the Big Four Are Telling Us—Taken Together

About the U.S. economy:

It is resilient but not robust
Slow growth is holding, not accelerating
Risks are asymmetric but manageable
A soft landing remains the base case

About the banking sector:

It is healthy, liquid, and profitable
Credit risk is contained
Capital is a strategic asset again
The next phase rewards discipline, not leverage

~ Jeff

Wednesday, April 01, 2026

The Scale Imperative: Banks Can Acquire Credit Unions

The traditional financial industry is facing a quiet, steady drain of its lifeblood. While the "unbanked" population is shrinking, the "loyalty" of the modern consumer is fragmenting. Millennials and Gen Z—the oldest of whom are now 45—are systematically moving their balances away from traditional institutions toward "cool" digital tools and high-yield platforms like Rocket or SoFi. Even loyal Gen X customers are increasingly treating their primary bank accounts as "paycheck motels", a term coined by Ron Shevlin, quickly routing funds to wherever they earn the most.

To survive this shift, banks don't just need better apps; they need scale.

The Untapped Reservoir of Retail Funding

Many banks have pivoted toward business banking to find higher balances and margins, but the foundation of a community bank’s funding remains retail deposits. Interestingly, the most robust retail deposit bases are currently locked inside credit unions—institutions that are struggling with their own scale issues and merging at a similar clip to banks.

While credit unions buying banks have dominated the headlines and trade group lobbying, it is time for the industry to flip the script. Banks can—and should—buy credit unions.

Industry Interest

I recently sat on an ABA panel at the recent ABA Washington Summit about this very issue. Joining me were industry experts on such transactions from law firm Luse Gorman and the ABA, moderated by Dave Daraio of Maspeth Federal Savings and Loan Association in Queens. The message: let’s pivot from lobbying against CU-bank deals to executing our own. It can be done.

Debunking the Myths of the "Impossible" Deal

The industry has long viewed bank-on-CU acquisitions as a regulatory and accounting nightmare. And recent history is no help. But the landscape has shifted:

The Legal Path Exists: Federal law (12 U.S.C. §1785) and NCUA regulations (12 CFR Part 708a, Subpart C) explicitly provide the roadmap for a bank to acquire the net assets of a credit union.
Regulatory Winds are Changing: The NCUA is currently rewriting its rules to make charter conversions to mutual banks easier, and is potentially "defanging" the poison pills of the past that they have wielded to thwart bank-CU deals.
The Efficiency Edge: Despite their tax-exempt status, credit unions are often less efficient than banks. For similarly sized institutions, banks have historically delivered better financial performance, even after paying taxes.

Overcoming the Capital Hurdle

The primary challenge is accounting. These deals are structured as asset purchases where the credit union’s value must be distributed to its members. While this can strain a buyer’s capital, it creates a unique opportunity for:

Stock Banks: Their ability to raise fresh capital gives them an advantage in absorbing these assets.
Larger Banks Buying Smaller CUs: When a larger bank acquires a smaller credit union, the capital contingencies become negligible, making the deal "cleaner" and faster to execute.
Member-to-Mutual Deals: The NCUA would likely be friendlier toward deals where credit union members gain depositor rights in a mutual bank.

Call to Action: Who Will Step Up?

We are currently in a favorable regulatory environment for deal-making. And I will confess that my firm would welcome the opportunity to be at the forefront of this deal-making. More important to readers, we cannot continue to ignore the fact that our retail funding base needs a massive infusion of scale to compete with non-traditional providers while doing so profitably.

Credit unions have the deposits banks need, and many are looking for an exit due to scale or succession issues or a way to provide more flexibility to their members.

The tools are in the manual. The law is on the books. The market demand is clear.

It is time for bank leadership to stop complaining about credit union expansion and start executing their own. Who is going to step up and lead the first major "reverse" merger of this new era?

~ Jeff