According to a new report by S&P Global Market Intelligence, America’s smaller banks are curtailing their lending.
The analysis of banks with less than $10 billion in assets found that, nationally, these institutions’ median sequential loan growth rate fell from 3.4 percent in the third quarter of 2022 and 3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 1.3 percent in the first quarter of this year.
In the Northeast, these banks originated almost $54 billion in C&I loans from January to March of this year, up 0.4 percent quarter-over-quarter. They also made $206.56 billion in commercial real estate and multifamily loans, up 1.5 percent on the same basis. Consumer lending volume, excluding home equity loans, fell 1.2 percent quarter-over-quarter to $24.92 billion.
That gave Northeast banks the slowest growth rate for C&I loans nationwide, the highest growth rate for commercial real estate and multifamily loans, and the largest decline in consumer lending.
Nationwide, commercial real estate loan growth was the slowest among banks with $100 million to $3 billion in assets, compared to banks with $3 billion to $10 billion in assets and over $10 billion in assets. Multifamily lending contracted .07 percent among this same group of banks, while still growing 1.1 percent among banks with $3 billion to $10 billion in assets and growing 3.3 percent among banks with more than $10 billion in assets.
The analysis is in line with the Federal Reserve’s recent quarterly survey of senior loan officers, that found 46 percent of domestic banks tightened lending standards for C&I loans, and 74 percent did the same for commercial real estate, construction and land development loans.






