Frequently Asked Questions

We don’t have a formal release calendar. We publish quarterly, with a lag of a little over one quarter. 
 
If you haven’t already, you can sign up here to receive an email alert when the data is updated.

Although the underlying FR Y-14M data are reported monthly, we publish the Large Bank Credit Card and Mortgage data on a quarterly basis. Quarterly data can be viewed on our Large Bank Credit Card and Mortgage Data site.

The aggregate credit card and mortgage data from the current and prior quarters can be downloaded as a CSV file. The CSV files are published on the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s Large Bank Credit Card and Mortgage Data website each quarter.

Access to the Large Bank Credit Card and Mortgage microdata is limited to the Federal Reserve System because of the confidential supervisory information collected in the FR Y-14M. However, beyond the charts provided in the Insights Report, many aggregated views of the data are provided in our Data Explorer.

The Y-14M respondent panel comprises U.S. bank holding companies, U.S. intermediate holding companies of foreign banking organizations, and covered savings and loan holding companies with $100 billion or more in total consolidated assets. These institutions are required to report credit card or first-lien mortgage data if portfolio balances exceed $5 billion or are material relative to tier 1 capital. Firms with over $100 billion in total consolidated assets that do not meet these thresholds may also voluntarily provide FR Y-14M data.

To protect the confidentiality of individual institutions, we withhold a subset of active reporting firms from the aggregate data, and the mix of firms included in published results will change over time.

Links to our variable definitions and methodology document should provide additional background on the fields we collect and how our data are derived. Additionally, the FR Y-14M instructions on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors site provide the complete listing of all variables collected for the monthly schedules.

All data are not seasonally adjusted.

Data presented are not inflation adjusted.

Our data only refer to large bank credit cards and mortgages.

We estimate that credit card balances in the aggregate large bank credit card data represent roughly four-fifths of total U.S. bank card balances. Credit card data in this report include consumer bankcards only and therefore exclude small business, corporate, and consumer charge cards. Most credit card variables are calculated using all credit card accounts that are open and that have not been charged off. However, there are a few credit card variables, noted in the variable names, that include active credit card accounts only.

We estimate that first-lien mortgage portfolio loans in the aggregate large bank first-lien mortgage data represent approximately one-eighth of total U.S. residential mortgage market debt. First-lien mortgage data in this report are first-lien closed-end loans secured by 1–4 family residential real estate. These loans include both first-lien mortgages and first-lien home equity loans. The data are for portfolio mortgages only, which are loans held on firm balance sheets in the month reported, to represent loans that pose a true credit risk to institutions.

We welcome feedback from the public on other variables of interest to add to our future reporting.

You may submit questions or feedback by emailing Phil.LargeBankData@phil.frb.org.

Active credit card accounts are defined as credit card accounts that are open and have had debit, credit, or balance activity in the last 12 months.

The Total Balances data are a snapshot in time, so they would include both balances that borrowers have elected to revolve to the next month as well as balances for full balance payers that have yet to be paid off.

The Payment Behavior and Revolving Balances charts in our Data Explorer provide insight into transactors, or individuals who pay off their outstanding balance in full each month, and revolvers, who elect to revolve some portion of their balance to the next month.

The Credit Card Payment Behavior chart in the Data Explorer is based on active U.S. credit card holders. Active credit card accounts are defined as credit card accounts that are open and have had debit, credit, or balance activity in the last 12 months. Payment behavior variables shown indicate the payment behavior of active credit card accounts in the final month of the quarter (i.e., March, June, September, December). However, when an account has a zero-cycle ending balance and zero payment, the prior month’s payment behavior is used to properly classify the account.

An example using 2025 Q1 data: a 10.45 percent share of accounts making the minimum payment means that, of the active credit card accounts in our large bank data set, 10.45 percent of them made only the minimum monthly payment on their credit card in March.

Please note, the three shares represented (accounts making the minimum payment, accounts making greater than the minimum payment but less than the full balance, accounts making the full balance payment) do not equate to 100 percent because the following three situations are not shown: active accounts with a zero or negative cycle ending balance and zero payment in the current and previous months, active accounts with missing payment or cycle ending balance information, and active accounts that made no payment or a payment that was less than the minimum payment. Therefore, it would not be accurate to assume that the remaining share of accounts not pictured on the chart are only those making less than the minimum payment.

These are loans held on firm balance sheets in the month reported, to represent loans that pose a true credit risk to institutions. The first-lien mortgage data that we publish are for portfolio mortgages only. Mortgages not reflected are those that have been sold or securitized and therefore are not held on firm balance sheets, including loans for which servicing rights are retained. Government-guaranteed loans (FHA residential loans, VA residential loans, FHA Project loans, HUD 235 loans) and loans qualified under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) are also excluded from portfolio loan totals.