Interest rates

The Federal Reserve has allowed more than $1 trillion of assets to roll off its balance sheet. Chair Jerome Powell says he doesn't believe reserves in the banking system are nearing a level that would cause the Fed to slow down or stop.

How are banks and the financial sector likely to perform in the coming year? The Americas chief investment officer of UBS Global Wealth Management shares her insights.

Top industry executives said this week that price increases are abating, even if they haven't yet fully abated. Their remarks reflect increased confidence that the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady — or perhaps even cut them — in the first half of 2024.

The North Carolina-based bank is considering the idea of selling a portion of its securities portfolio as a way to build capital, CEO Bill Rogers said Tuesday. At the end of the third quarter, Truist's securities were worth about 20% less than what the company paid for them.

Los Angeles-based City National Bank recorded a $247 million loss during a tumultuous final quarter of its fiscal year. But executives at the bank's Canadian parent company say they expect a return to profitability in the first quarter.

The BSBY interest rate benchmark was originally envisioned as a successor to the once-ubiquitous Libor rate. But it failed to gain much traction, and Bloomberg now plans to shut it down next year.

In Canada and the U.K., borrowers can take mortgages with them from home to home. Some say this feature could unlock the U.S. housing market, but others say it would be more trouble than it's worth.

Capping interest rates may be popular with consumers, and ultimately voters, but doing so would actually hurt those advocates are trying to help.

A national interest rate cap of 36% would protect consumers from predatory practices that exploit their desperation and would level the playing field with responsible lenders who offer fair and transparent products.

Bankers are hopeful that several factors could strengthen profits next year, including higher loan demand and more stable funding costs as the Fed holds the line on — or even lowers — interest rates.

Share prices climbed sharply amid increased optimism about the outlook for interest rates. Regional banks that got hammered earlier this year were among the biggest winners.

But high costs and any downturn in the economy could weigh on lenders and their commercial borrowers in coming months, economists caution.

More banks are selling their underwater bond portfolios at a loss, crystallizing what were previously losses on paper only. Though the maneuver brings some short-term pain, the banks expect to make the money back over time.

Longtime customers of Capital One's online banking arm thought they were getting the best possible rate, according to a lawsuit. Little did they realize, they say, that they needed to open a new account in order to benefit from interest rate increases.

Many banks tapped the brakes on mergers and acquisitions this year amid economic and regulatory challenges. But executives at banks with a history of dealmaking say conditions could be right for them to return to buying mode next year.

Banking executives anticipate that loan demand will remain muted over the next 12 months, according to a new survey by the financial services firm IntraFi. That finding lines up with bankers' expectation that rates won't start declining until at least the second half of 2024.

Speaking on a panel at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the JPMorgan Chase chief voiced doubts that central banks and governments around the world could manage the economic fallout from rising inflation and slowing global growth.

The movement of cash to money market funds from bank accounts will diminish lenders' ability to finance small and midsize firms, BlackRock Investment Institute said in a new paper. BlackRock and other money managers have spent much of this year readying to fill that void.

The second-largest U.S. bank says net interest income, a key source of revenue for the bank, rose 4.5% to $14.4 billion in the third quarter.

The Westlake, Texas, firm said deposits fell 28% to $284.4 billion in the third quarter from the year prior, beating the $268.8 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.