NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. consumers remain in good financial health and there are little signs of credit quality deterioration, according to the nation's top banking executives, despite data showing the job market is cooling off.
Leaders from Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo told investors this week that consumers were continuing to spend money and mostly pay their debts on time.
"Despite what you may read in terms of softening, we are seeing activity levels still to be quite strong and credit
performance to still be quite good on the consumer side," Wells Fargo CFO Mike Santomassimo told investors at a conference on Tuesday.
Citigroup's CFO Mark Mason said consumer spending is up and delinquencies, especially on the credit card portfolio, are under control.
"On the consumer side, we continue to see spend up particularly in our branded card portfolio," he said. "We aren't seeing any abnormal signs around delinquencies with our card customers."
Even mid-sized banks reported strong credit quality for consumers.
"We still see credit quality as being quite strong, said Brantley Standridge, Senior Vice President, Consumer and Regional Banking at Huntington.
"A number of our consumer-focused businesses like our auto finance business have had very strong summer months. We also see payments data that would say that our payments activity through debit has slowed slightly but is still looking very good."
The comments came a day after Bank of America's Chief Financial Officer Alastair Borthwick said at the same conference that consumer finances remain healthy as credit card spending accelerates and fewer borrowers have longer-term delinquencies.
"The consumer at this point appears to be ... resilient, doing well and in a good position, and that's reflected in our asset quality numbers," he said.
BofA's consumer net charge-offs of $1.1 billion decreased $60 million in the second quarter versus the first quarter, driven by lower credit card losses.
Banks will start reporting their third-quarter earnings in October.
The optimistic forecasts from bankers came as latest data showed the U.S. economy likely created 911,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months through March than previously estimated, suggesting job growth was already stalling before President Donald Trump's aggressive import tariffs.
Americans grew notably less sanguine about the job market in August amid a notable rise in concerns about the ability to get new employment in the event of a job loss, New York Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Expectations showed.
"The consumer in aggregate is resilient but spending is increasingly concentrated among the higher income groups and though delinquencies improved, the improvement was very minor," said Christopher Hodge, chief U.S. economist for Natixis.
"What is helping to prevent a steep fall is the low level of layoffs and stable wage gains. So there are pockets of weakness, but overall spending should be held up by the wealthy and the fact that although wages are not rising fast, the workers have had job stability."
(Reporting by Saeed Azhar, Nupur Anand, Tatiana BautzerEditing by Nick Zieminski)
