Consumer Loan Charge-Off Rate (Banks)

## What this measures

Consumer loans (credit cards and other consumer loans such as auto loans) that U.S. commercial banks wrote off in the quarter, net of recoveries, as an annualized percent of average consumer loans. Seasonally adjusted. Mortgages are not consumer loans here.

## Why it matters

It is the realized loss on household borrowing outside mortgages, the part of household credit most sensitive to job losses and squeezed budgets.

## How to read it

Higher is worse. Cards dominate it; read it with the card rate (fred_corccacbs) and the other-consumer rate (fred_coroclacbs).

## What it does not say

Commercial banks only: no savings institutions, credit unions, finance companies or private credit funds. A charge-off is the bank’s decision to write a loan off, so its timing lags the borrower’s trouble and differs from bank to bank. Seasonally adjusted, annualized, and revised.

## Source

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Charge-Off and Delinquency Rates on Loans and Leases at Commercial Banks (FRED series CORCACBS). Palanor pulls it from the FRED API (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) nightly. Federal Reserve Board data are in the public domain.