CARD FEE INCOME AS A % OF TOTAL INCOME REMAINS FLAT
In their series of weekly year-end card industry trend reports R.K. Hammer now discusses how fee income continues to perform in terms of top line revenue contribution. For decades, interest income on prime/super prime cards had always contributed the largest portion of the card industry’s revenue streams; just the exact opposite for subprime cards, though, where fees have always been the higher piece of total income. As reported earlier, the line between interest income and fee income for prime/super prime accounts has been narrowing substantially in recent years; with lower revenue in many cases coming from interest and an increasingly higher portion derived from fees. That trend continued again in 2013.
