Measuring Credit Card Industry Chargeoffs : A Review of Sources and Methods

The percentage of credit card loans that are charged off by card issuers during a particular month or quarter is an important metric. It provides insights into the financial health of the credit card industry and the U.S. consumer. After offering a brief overview of credit card chargeoff reporting, this paper describes five different chargeoff statistics in detail. Sampling techniques, frequency, availability, and calculation methods for each statistic are discussed and compared. One of the paper's key finding is that the various on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet chargeoff measures, after moving in the same general direction for almost a decade, have recently diverged and become less correlated