Portfolio issues face banks big and small | Charlotte Business Journal

Portfolio issues face banks big and small

Opinions differ over looming troubles with credit quality for the region's biggest banks

Charlotte Business Journal - December 29, 2006by Will BoyeStaff writer


For the past few years, credit quality has essentially been a nonissue at large U.S. banks. The percentage of loans that have soured has fallen, and that welcome trend continued in 2006.

But industry analysts and some bank executives are saying troubled credit may appear in greater numbers among loan portfolios in 2007.

"We've been saying for two or three years that credit can't get any better, and we were wrong," Dick Kovacevich, chief executive at Wells Fargo & Co., said at an investor conference in New York earlier this month. "Credit did get better. But I'm now telling you that credit can't get any better, and I'm going to be right this time, unfortunately."

For the first three quarters of 2006, net charge-offs -- the total of loans and leases removed from balance sheets because they can't be collected -- dropped to 0.36% at all banks, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. During the same period in 2005, the figure was 0.47%, and in 2004 it was 0.55%.

Bank analysts and industry watchers believe the industry is due for a more "normal" rate of uncollectible or bad loans, but opinions vary on how that correction might play out in 2007...