Comptroller of the Currency Survey of Credit Underwriting Practices, 2007

摘要

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) earlier this year conducted its 13th annual survey of credit underwriting practices. The survey identified trends in lending standards and credit risk over the past 12 months for the most common types of commercial and retail credit offered by national banks. The 2007 survey included the 78 largest national banks by asset size and covered the 12-month period ending March 31, 2007. Although mergers and acquisitions have altered the survey population, it has covered substantially the same group of banks for the past 10 years. All companies in the 2007 survey had total assets in excess of $2 billion and their aggregate total loan portfolio as of year-end 2006 was approximately $3.2 trillion, which represented over 85 percent of all outstanding loans in the national banking system. Large banks referenced in the subsequent comments are the 20 largest banks by asset size that are supervised in the OCCs Large Bank Supervision department; the other banks are supervised in the OCCs Mid-Size/Community Bank Supervision (M/CBS) department. Examiners-in-charge of the surveyed banks were asked a series of questions concerning overall credit trends for 18 commercial and retail credit products. The survey also included, for the first time, an assessment of underwriting standards for credit exposures related to hedge funds. This information will be analyzed and will be included in future surveys as trends develop or information warrants. For purposes of this survey, commercial credit was grouped into 12 categories: agricultural, asset-based lending, commercial construction, residential construction, other commercial real estate, commercial leasing, international, large corporate, leveraged, middle market, small business, and hedge funds. Retail products included seven categories: affordable housing, credit cards, indirect consumer paper, conventional home equity, high loan-to-value (LTV) home equity, other direct consumer, and residential first mortgages. The term underwriting standards, as used in this report, refers to the conditions under which credit is extended, such as collateral, loan maturities, pricing, and covenants, that banks establish when originating or renewing loans. Conclusions about easing or tightening are drawn from OCC examiners observations over the prior 12 months. A conclusion that the underwriting standards for a particular loan category have eased or tightened does not necessarily indicate that all the standards for that particular category have been adjusted. Rather, it suggests that the adjustments that did occur had the net effect of easing or tightening the aggregate conditions under which credit was extended. Part I of this report summarizes the overall results of the survey. Part II depicts the survey results in graphs and tables.