CC Delinquency (Small Banks)

Banks outside the top 100 by assets serve a lower-income, subprime-heavier customer base than the prime-dominated big-bank books (Chase, Amex, Capital One). That makes their credit-card delinquency rate the cleanest read on stress in the bottom half of the income distribution — the part of the consumer that loses access to credit, falls behind on bills, and pulls back on spending first as the cycle turns. The all-banks aggregate smooths over that signal because the big-bank denominator is so large; this card isolates it. The rating here is calibrated against this series' own history (1991-present), not against the all-banks aggregate. That matters: small-bank delinquency has run structurally higher than all-banks for the entire history of the data, so judging it against the aggregate's bands would either flag it as permanently extreme or miss the regimes where it's stretched relative to its own past. What this card answers is "how stressed is the subprime borrower right now compared to the worst times in this segment's recorded history?" — readings near or above the 2008-2009 peaks are the most reliable late-cycle warning the consumer-credit data produces. Pair with the all-banks Credit Card Delinquency card to read the gap between the two; the gap widening faster than the small-bank line itself is rising is the K-shape divergence and tends to precede broader consumer pullback.