Uncollectable Consumer-Debt Rate Drops

Consumers are doing a better job paying their credit card bills, with the proportion of bad loans written off as uncollectable during March falling for the first time in three years, Moody’s Investors Service said. But the rating service cautioned that the improvement may be short-lived, as ongoing consolidation in the banking industry stiffens competition and forces card issuers to relax credit standards to generate business. Moody’s said the group of card issuers it tracks wrote off as uncollectable 6.63% of credit card balances in March. That was below the 6.72% in March 1997 and was the first year-over-year decline in three years.