3 of America’s 50 Largest Banks Post Warning-Level Delinquency Across Every Major Credit-Quality Measure

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla., September 10, 2026 — Weiss Ratings, the nation’s only independent rating agency that accepts no compensation from the companies it rates, has completed a new analysis of loan delinquency and credit-quality trends among the 50 largest U.S. banks by total assets, drawn from Weiss Ratings’ own bank ratings data for the second quarter of 2026, the latest data available. The analysis found sharp and persistent differences in credit quality among the nation’s largest lenders — with three banks ranking among the worst on every measure tracked, and only two consistently among the best.

Gavin Magor, Weiss Ratings’ Director of Ratings, commented: “Bank size tells you almost nothing about credit quality. Some of the largest names in American banking are carrying meaningfully worse loan books than banks a fraction their size, and depositors and investors alike deserve to know which is which.”

Worst-Performing Lenders on Every Delinquency Measure

Source: Weiss Ratings, Top 50 Banks by Assets, Q2 2026. Ranking reflects the three banks, among the 50 largest U.S. banks by assets, that fall in the worst decile on every one of the five measures shown.

Capital One, National Association ($662.2 billion in total assets), American Express National Bank ($213.9 billion), and Banco Popular de Puerto Rico ($63.3 billion) are the only three banks, among the 50 largest in the country, that rank in the worst 10 on every single one of five separate delinquency and credit-quality measures tracked by Weiss — nonperforming assets, nonperforming loans, past-due debt, charge-offs, and loan loss reserves. Capital One, the largest of the three by a wide margin, alone set aside 5.02 cents in loan loss reserves for every dollar of loans outstanding, nearly five times the median for a large U.S. bank. All three lean heavily on consumer and card lending, a business line that typically runs hotter on delinquency than commercial or mortgage lending — but the consistency of their weakness across every single measure sets them apart from other consumer lenders in the top 50.

Best-Performing Lenders on Every Delinquency Measure

Source: Weiss Ratings, Top 50 Banks by Assets, Q2 2026. Custody, wealth-management, and trust banks with minimal traditional loan books were excluded from this ranking; see note below.

BOKF, National Association ($53.0 billion in total assets) is the only true lending bank, among the 50 largest in the country, to rank in the best 10 on all five delinquency and credit-quality measures. BOKF is the banking subsidiary of BOK Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: BOKF), a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based holding company majority owned by chairman George Kaiser. Though little known outside its home region, BOKF is one of the 50 largest banks in the country and the largest bank based in Oklahoma, operating retail and commercial banking under the Bank of Oklahoma, Bank of Texas, and Bank of Albuquerque brands. SoFi Bank ($56.8 billion in total assets) posted the single cleanest loan book of any major U.S. lender — effectively zero nonperforming assets and nonperforming loans — though a mid-pack past-due ratio kept it just outside a perfect sweep.

“It’s easy to assume the safest bank is always the biggest, or the oldest,” Magor added. “But when we strip out banks whose business model barely involves lending, the numbers tell a different story: a mid-sized regional bank and a nine-year-old digital bank posted materially cleaner loan books than banks many times their size.”

Because banks such as Charles Schwab Bank, UBS Bank USA, Bank of New York Mellon, Northern Trust, State Street, and Morgan Stanley Private Bank operate primarily as custodians or wealth managers rather than traditional lenders, Weiss excluded them from the best-performer ranking above to avoid crediting near-zero delinquency to firms with little lending activity to begin with. Weiss recommends that any comparison of bank credit quality account for business model, not credit ratios in isolation.

To look up the Weiss Safety Rating and underlying credit-quality data for any U.S. bank, consumers, depositors, and investors can visit Weiss Ratings’ bank ratings platform.

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About Weiss Ratings: Weiss rates 53,000 institutions and investments, including safety ratings on insurers, banks and credit unions, as well as investment ratings on stocks, ETFs, mutual funds and digital assets. Since its founding in 1971, Weiss Ratings has never accepted any form of payment from rated entities for its ratings. All Weiss bank ratings are available at https://weissratings.com/en/products/bank-ratings.

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