Then, just as you're writing off "Rated P for Parenthood" as a bad, demographically opportunistic mash-up, a new mother sings a lovely middle-of-the-night lullaby to her infant son, and her husband offers her $50 to take his turn getting out of bed to tend to the baby.
Previously, the write-off rate for loans was about 26%.
In November Amex wrote off 7.6% of its portfolio, nearly doubling the write-off rate at the end of 2007.
During the quarter, American Express' write-off rate dropped below 5 percent of balances for the first time since early 2008.
Both the bad loan write-off rate and the late-payment rate rose more than 13percentt from their levels a year earlier, Moody's said.
The Treasury is concerned by the new higher write-off rate and, as a result, has insisted on the continuation of the cap on overall student numbers first introduced in 2008.
And despite Wall Street's mounting concerns about bad loans, American Express said its net write-off rate, or percent of loans it does not expect to recover, improved slightly to 4.4percentt in the fourth quarter from 4.5percentt in 1999.
Applying industry standards, the company reported that its net loan write-off rate was 5.3percentt in the quarter, up from 4.3percentt in the first three months of the year — and steeply higher than the 2.9percentt of a year ago.
The company said the U.S. net loan write-off rate was 6.7% on a managed basis, compared with 5.9% in the prior quarter and 3.4% a year ago.
Banks' write-off rates on credit cards have increased sharply but those on mortgages remain very low.In this section This vehicle is reversing Paella in the sky Don't slag it off Underground; overbudget The better you do, the greater the risk Oil slick Will Brown have Balls?
The firm sounded a cautious tone in its outlook though, warning that lending write-off rates are likely to rise through the third quarter.
