Capital One’s loan charge-offs surge 54% in Q4

Amount of credit cards and consumer loans getting written off approaches pre-pandemic levels

Capital One absorbed $1.4 billion in charge-offs during the last three months of 2022, a 54% sequential increase that bodes ill for both its loan book and US consumers’ resilience.

At 1.86%, the annualised net charge-off rate was up 62 basis points from end-September and 107bp from end-December 2021. The rate stood at a 0.67% multi-year nadir as recently as September 2021.

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The bank marked $1 billion of domestic credit card exposures as unrecoverable in Q4, up 55% in three months and 162