What This Dashboard Tracks
The Bank Lending Standards Tracker organizes the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices (SLOOS), the primary public survey of how banks are changing underwriting standards, loan terms, and their willingness to extend credit.
Core Survey Measures
C&I Lending Standards: The net percentage of banks reporting tighter or easier standards for commercial and industrial loans, reported separately for large and middle-market firms and for small firms.
Loan Demand: The net percentage of banks reporting stronger or weaker demand for C&I and commercial real estate loans. Demand and standards must be read together: weak originations can reflect either lender restraint, borrower caution, or both.
Terms and Pricing: Survey responses cover spreads over funding costs, credit-line costs, covenant requirements, collateralization, and maximum loan size. These qualitative measures provide context that aggregate loan balances cannot.
Reasons for Tightening: Banks report whether changes reflect economic uncertainty, reduced risk tolerance, industry-specific concerns, competition, funding costs, or balance-sheet constraints.
Why It Matters
SLOOS is a leading indicator of credit availability. Sustained tightening can precede slower loan growth and weaker business investment, while easing standards can confirm that a credit contraction is abating. Because it is quarterly and survey-based, it is most useful when read alongside weekly bank balance-sheet data and market spreads.
Sources: Federal Reserve Board, Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices; Federal Reserve H.8 Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks.