Bad Credit Card Debt Is on the Rise
- Capital One CEO sees ‘degradation’ in customer credit quality
- Fairbank also questions whether credit reports are misleading
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Red flags are flying in the credit-card industry after a key gauge of bad debt jumped to the highest level in almost seven years.
The charge-off rate -- the percentage of loans companies have decided they’ll never collect -- rose to 3.82 percent in the first three months of 2019, the highest since the second quarter of 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. And loans 30 days past due, a harbinger of future write-offs, increased at all seven of the largest U.S. card issuers.