The trade press has covered the bank-channel corporate actions one at a time. Midland States Bank's $502.0M sale of its lease portfolio to North Mill in November 2025. HomeTrust Bank's transportation exit in Q1 2024 after concentrated trucking losses. BMO Transportation Finance under strategic review since mid-2025. Meridian Bank reducing its lease book roughly 40.00% during 2025. Axos Bank closing on Verdant Commercial Capital in September 2025. Fifth Third absorbing Comerica's lease portfolio in February 2026. Trustmark adding $254.0M in equipment finance assets in 2025, a +57.00% segment build-out.

These are not unrelated events. They are the same cycle observed from different vantage points. The FDIC call report data, taken in aggregate across 24 months, names the structure that the individual stories did not.

The Stock Numbers

Across 4,327 FDIC-insured institutions reporting in both 12/31/2023 and 12/31/2025, the matched-set view shows the following:

  • Total Assets: $23,197.4B (12/31/2023) to $25,255.3B (12/31/2025), +$2,057.9B (+8.87%)
  • Total Loans: $12,097.9B to $13,476.6B, +$1,378.7B (+11.40%)
  • Lease Fin Rec: $116.8B to $122.7B, +$5.9B (+5.04%)
  • LFR as % of Total Loans: 0.97% to 0.91%, down 5.5 basis points

Bank-channel lease finance receivables grew, but at less than half the pace of total loan books at the same institutions. The lease line is becoming a smaller share of bank lending. The institutional count tells the same story directionally. The number of FDIC-insured institutions reporting nonzero Lease Fin Rec fell from 756 at the end of 2023 to 692 two years later. Ninety institutions exited the business entirely during the window. Sixty-one entered. The net contraction is real, and it is concentrated at the mid-tier.

Top 10 concentration rose from 62.95% to 64.98% of the bank channel. The composition shifted: two large regional names rotated out of the top 10, two others moved in. The largest player held its position throughout and modestly expanded its share. The bank channel is consolidating, even as the aggregate dollar balance grows.

The Credit Numbers

Stock growth was modest. Credit quality movement was not. The matched-set 24-month comparison on point-in-time balance sheet metrics:

  • Nonperforming: $439.7M to $703.8M (+60.05%)
  • Nonaccrual: $406.4M to $643.5M (+58.34%)
  • 90+ Days Past Due: $33.3M to $60.3M (+80.81%)
  • 30-89 Days Past Due: $834.9M to $894.1M (+7.09%)

Charge-off activity on a same-fiscal-quarter basis:

  • Charge-Off (Q4 2023 vs Q4 2025): $119.1M to $212.9M (+78.70%)
  • Net Charge-Off (Q4 2023 vs Q4 2025): $79.4M to $155.0M (+95.21%)

The 30-89 Days bucket is the lone laggard. That is consistent with migration through the aging stages rather than a fresh influx of early-stage stress as of the most recent complete reporting period. The portfolio-level Nonperforming ratio against Lease Fin Rec moved from 0.38% to 0.57% across the full reporting universe, with sequential progression accelerating through 2025: 0.44%, 0.46%, 0.53%, 0.57% across the four quarters.

Where the Stress Concentrates

State-level patterns, restricted to states with more than $500.0M in Lease Fin Rec for signal density:

  • Illinois: $3.43B LFR, NPL 1.219% (2023) to 2.338% (2025), +111.9 bps, 55 institutions
  • North Carolina: $27.83B LFR, NPL 0.283% to 0.589%, +30.6 bps, 7 institutions
  • New York: $5.00B LFR, NPL 0.402% to 0.703%, +30.1 bps, 8 institutions
  • Delaware: $12.52B LFR, NPL 0.130% to 0.342%, +21.2 bps, 4 institutions
  • Florida: $4.05B LFR, NPL 0.786% to 0.917%, +13.2 bps, 7 institutions

Illinois carries the most concerning combination: highest absolute NPL ratio among large-LFR states and the largest count of reporting institutions, mostly at community-bank scale.

Asset-size cohort deciles for institutions with nonzero LFR show the largest banks ($20.99B+ in assets) carrying the lowest Net Charge-Off ratio at 0.06%, against a matched portfolio average of 0.13%. Stress concentrates in the mid-tier. The $210.0M to $320.0M and $2.30B to $4.51B asset bands print Net Charge-Off ratios of 1.27% and 1.28% respectively. These are the size bands where the named exits and reductions referenced earlier have occurred.

The Cycle the Data Reveals

Inference, labeled as such: the consolidation cycle visible in the corporate-action news flow is being driven by a credit cycle that the aggregate stock numbers partially obscure. Mid-tier community and regional banks that built or acquired equipment finance platforms over the prior decade are now sitting on inherited books showing late-cycle stress. The largest banks have the workout infrastructure and the capital to absorb the losses. The mid-tier does not, and the call report data places the institutional exits in the right size band to corroborate the pattern.

This is one inference. The data supports it. The data does not prove it.

What the Data Does Not Say

The FDIC call report measures outstanding lease finance receivables at quarter-end. It does not isolate originations from runoff, payoffs, sales, or charge-offs. Industry origination growth claims, regardless of source, cannot be validated or refuted against this dataset directly. The stock dimension says bank-channel lease balances grew +5.04% over 24 months on a matched basis while bank total loans grew +11.40%. Whatever volume growth is occurring at the industry level is happening primarily outside the FDIC bank universe.

Data Limitations

The 3/31/2026 call report file used for this analysis is incomplete. Eighty-three institutions present in the 12/31/2025 file are absent from the 3/31/2026 file, representing $43.4B in Lease Fin Rec (35.39% of the Q4 2025 total) and $12.6T in assets (49.79% of the Q4 2025 total). Aggregate figures from 3/31/2026 should not be cited as quarterly comparisons against complete prior periods until the missing institutions are re-pulled from the FDIC source. The 24-month matched comparison anchoring this piece uses 12/31/2023 and 12/31/2025, both of which represent complete reporting universes.

Quarters between 12/31/2023 and 3/31/2025 were not available in the dataset. The deterioration documented above occurred somewhere within that window, with sequential 2025 readings showing the curve still rising at year-end.