The biggest U.S. banks have benefitted from their enormous consumer franchises and broad deposit bases as runs have hit midsize competitors.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., the four largest U.S. banks, hold about 44.2% of consumer deposits nationwide, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data on their primary bank subsidiaries. Consumer deposits tend to include accounts that households use for regular expenses, providing granular pools of funding that are resistant to outflows and less price sensitive than other balances.

Segment data reported by the banks also provides a rough sketch of deposit velocity by customer type. At JPMorgan Chase, BofA and Wells Fargo, deposit declines have been the largest at wealth management units, ranging from drops of 10.4% to 27.9% in 2022, followed by drops of 6.8% to 15.3% in corporate and commercial units. In consumer units, changes ranged from a decline of 2.7% to growth of 2.5%.

SVB Financial Group and Signature Bank, which collapsed after spectacular outflows of deposits, focused on business depositors, giving rise to government deliberations about expanding deposit insurance to larger balances. Meanwhile, big banks have reportedly been recipients of new deposits from nervous customers at other banks, and demonstrating their resources, they put $30 billion of deposits into First Republic Bank, which simultaneously announced that it had borrowed up to $109 billion from the Federal Reserve in the preceding days.

Consumer powerhouses

BofA alone held 17.4% of consumer deposits at the end of 2022, while JPMorgan Chase had 13.6% and Wells Fargo had 11.2%, according to the S&P Global Market Intelligence data. Citi, which focuses on business clients and has a large global presence and a comparatively small U.S. branch network, had 2.1%.

While the numbers do describe vast consumer businesses, they do not give a clear-cut read on market share. The figures that banks report are periodically subject to large swings that do not necessarily reflect substantive changes in deposit portfolios.

The data is based on line items in regulatory filings for transaction, money market and savings deposit products that are "intended primarily for individuals." An example of a big swing in the data was a $282.87 billion sequential increase in interest and noninterest transaction balances "for individuals" in the fourth quarter of 2020 at Wells Fargo, which at face value would have implied a gigantic increase in share for the bank in those subcategories. However, during the same period, Wells Fargo reported an offsetting sequential decrease of $256.38 billion in other savings balances for individuals.

The bank said it stopped reclassifying some demand deposits as savings deposits because of a change in the Fed's reserve requirements framework.

Percentages of balances attributable to other banks with more than $150 billion of consumer deposits reflect swings at Charles Schwab Corp., where numbers have been impacted by changes in rules and the reporting framework for sweep deposits.

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Velocity by segment

BofA said as early as October 2022 that it was passing on most underlying rate increases to "higher-end" wealth management customers, who tend to have large amounts of money ready to move when attractive investment opportunities emerge.

In corporate segments, even before the recent turmoil — which could intensify competition as banks seek to retain balances — executives like Wells Fargo CFO Michael Santomassimo expected price pressure to stay strong. Wholesale depositors tend to manage cash balances carefully.

To be sure, consumer deposits are also subject to outflows, and the relative shelter they offer extends to smaller banks in addition to the biggest ones. The consumer deposit data shows that banks with less than $10 billion of such balances held 15.2% of the national aggregate at the end of 2022 (the data is reported only by banks with more than $1 billion of assets).

Still, perhaps along with the perception that the government will not let the big banks collapse, their consumer operations have helped put them in a relatively strong position for the current crisis.