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The four largest US banks are on course to take their biggest share of the industry’s profits in nearly a decade, a sign of how they are consolidating their dominant market position.

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, the four largest US banks through deposits and assets, collectively reported about $88bn in income in the first nine months of 2024, according to Financial Times calculations based on figures from industry tracker BankRegData.

Together they account for 44 percent of the U.S. banking industry’s revenue — the highest share in the first nine months of the year since 2015 — despite the pool capturing more than 4,000 other banks in country.

Including US Bank, PNC and Truist, the seven largest banks by deposits generated almost 56 percent of all banking income in the first nine months of the year, up from 48 percent in the same period in 2023.

JPMorgan, BofA, Citi, Wells, US Bank and Truist declined to comment. PNC did not respond to requests for comment.

The data are from earnings reported by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a banking regulator, and relate only to earnings reported by US banking entities.

Banks may also include different businesses within the data they report, and larger banks such as JPMorgan and BofA includes income from investment banking and trading where many smaller banks cannot compete.

While the numbers don’t exactly match the profits banks report to investors, they show the growing importance of size to the banking industry as it grapples with higher regulation, technology, marketing and costs. in surgery. Large businesses can spread these costs over many customers.

“Once you’re below the biggest banks, then it becomes very difficult to make the necessary investments and have the same name recognition,” said Oppenheimer banking analyst Chris Kotowski.

“We’re a mobile society, especially since Covid. A lot of people have moved from New York to Florida for example, do you really need to have a different bank in Florida than you do in New York?”

The US has an unusually fragmented banking system, in large part because consolidation was delayed by restrictions on interstate banking that were only lifted in the 1980s.

The dominant positions of the largest US banks have fueled calls for further consolidation among smaller banks to better compete.

Deal-making has slowed in recent years, although there are hopes that the incoming Trump administration may adopt a more permissive policy.

Bob Diamond, the former head of Barclays who now runs an investment company, told the Financial Times in early December that he believes the number of US banks will more than halve in the next three years.

But the main competitors of large banks are mainly non-banks, including private credit companies, which offer bank-like services.

Financial institutions such as Apollo, Affirm and Rocket Mortgage have become increasingly influential lenders to corporations, home buyers and consumers, although this lending is often funded by banks.

In the mortgage market, non-bank companies now handle more than half of US home loans compared to 11 percent in 2011.

In his annual shareholder letter, JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon called tech giant Apple “effectively” acting as a bank by holding, moving and lending money.