|
 The second largest U.S. bank has been cleaning up and shrinking its
credit card portfolio since 2009, after getting burned by bad loans.
Now that the bank has shed its worst accounts and cut its total
loans by 62 percent, it is ready to dial up its lending.
The bank is focused on selling credit cards to its existing
customers. This will insure the bank knows more about the customers
it is lending to and save money on marketing.
"That was our biggest strategic choice," said Titi Cole, a senior
executive for retail products, referring to the bank's decision to
focus on existing customers. "The card business will be smaller, but
less volatile and more profitable."
So far, its efforts seem to be paying off. Average U.S. credit card
balances at the Charlotte, North Carolina bank rose 0.32 percent,
from $89.7 billion to $90.0 billion, between the end of June and the
end of September. That's a small increase, but it's the first in at
least three years. (An accounting change starting in 2010 makes it
difficult to compare quarterly balances from recent years to 2009
and earlier periods.)
The bank also issued 1 million new cards in the quarter, the highest
number since 2008, and new card issuance in the fourth quarter
should continue to be strong, chief executive Brian Moynihan said at
an investor conference on December 10.
Banks in general are looking to boost their credit card portfolios
now — they mailed out 45 percent more credit card offers in November
than they did a year earlier, according to Credit Suisse and Mintel
Comperemedia data—and some, most notably Wells Fargo & Co <WFC.N>
are focusing on marketing to existing customers.
The benefits of offering cards to current customers is clear — Bank
of America executives have calculated that if clients who already
have a checking account sign up for a credit card or other loan from
the bank, it will take in over $1,000 in additional revenue per
household. It calls this strategy the "stairstep approach". The bank
has broadly been struggling to boost revenue.
Cole said in an interview that while competition in the credit card
space is heating up, the size of the bank's current customer base
will set it apart. Bank of America has relationships with one out of
every two American households, giving the bank more relationships to
use to gain new accounts, she said.
"The opportunity ahead of us is tens of millions of customers still.
It is not a small little opportunity," Moynihan said at a November
investor conference.
The bank does not disclose how much of its quarterly revenues or
income come from credit cards.
IMPORTANT SOURCE OF REVENUE
Bank of America invented the credit card in the late 1950s, building
both a credit card network that turned into what is now Visa Inc. <V.N>
and a portfolio of loans as well.
[to top of second column] |
In 2006, the bank bought MBNA, which had been the world's largest
independent credit card issuer, a step that swelled Bank of
America's credit card portfolio just before the financial crisis.
Losses from cards jumped in 2008 and 2009, which prompted the bank
to sell most of its foreign portfolios and write off many billions
of dollars in loans, known as "charging off" in the credit card
industry.
Since then, the unit's credit quality has improved — Bank of
America's credit card charge-offs have fallen by 80 percent since
2010, and loss rates have fallen from 12.8 percent to 3.5 percent.
With a smaller portfolio, even if losses double from current rates,
"that is not a life-threatening event at all," Moynihan said at a
news event in November.
U.S. consumers are in the best position to pay their bills and
increase their borrowing in years. Household debt payments as a
share of disposable income are the lowest level they have been since
the Federal Reserve began keeping track in 1980.
Banks make money from credit cards in two ways: from the interest
payments borrowers make on their loans, and from fees they receive
from merchants and cardholders.
Fee income has been falling across the industry. Lawmakers and
regulators, spurred by lending practices that consumer advocates and
merchants viewed as abusive, have limited many of the kinds of fees
that banks can charge through the 2009 CARD Act and the 2010
Dodd-Frank Act.
At Bank of America, non-interest income from cards, a measure of fee
income, fell 12 percent in the third quarter from the same period a
year earlier.
Banks now have less fee income to rely on, so they are hoping to
increase their interest income, which can be relatively high on a
loan. The average interest rate the bank earned on credit card loans
in the third quarter was 9.81 percent, over 2.5 times higher than
other consumer loans like mortgages or home equity.
As other businesses like mortgage refinancing slow down, credit
cards could prove to be an important source of revenue for the bank,
said David Robertson, the publisher of The Nilson Report.
"What they've decided to do as a company is invest in the card
business. Looking at the disaster that is the mortgage business,
it's a good call," Robertson said.
(Editing by Dan Wilchins and Stephen
Powell)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
