A growing share of US consumers say they’re not seeking loans because they expect to be refused amid tight credit conditions, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

The share of discouraged borrowers, defined as respondents who said they needed credit but didn’t apply because they didn’t expect to get approved, climbed to 8.5% in the New York Fed’s latest Survey of Consumer Expectations. That’s the highest level since the study began in 2013.

The perceived likelihood of being rejected increased across different forms of credit, from cards to secured loans to buy homes and cars. Roughly one-third of auto loan applicants expected to get turned down, the highest share since the start of the series, while nearly half of all respondents in the February survey said it’ll be harder to get credit in a year’s time.

The data adds to a picture of increasingly fragile household finances for many Americans, as a cooling job market slows wage gains while high borrowing costs are making bills harder to pay. Delinquency rates remain low by pre-pandemic standards but they’ve been edging higher in most categories, and lenders are turning cautious.  

More than four in 10 US homeowners who sought to refinance their mortgages had their applications rejected, according to the February survey, quadruple the share in October 2023. 

With mortgage lending rates still much higher than a couple of years ago, many people seeking a refi are likely trying to tap equity accumulated during the recent housing boom in order to meet other debt costs or expenses, rather than to reduce their monthly payments. Inability to do so could put some under pressure to sell their homes. 

Meanwhile, the share of consumers in the New York Fed survey who said they could come up with $2,000 in the event of an unexpected need declined to 63%, a new series low.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Bank of America, which has come under scrutiny for its treatment of junior bankers, is changing who is overseeing the workloads of its young executives. The bank is now having senior bankers—those who hold a title of director or above—monitor the nature and volume of assignments piled on lower level staff who, in an industry famous for grueling hours, often work well into the night to complete deals. 

Bank of America’s efforts come after a series of tragedies involving young people that have shaken the investment banking sector. In January, Carter Anthony McIntosh, a 28-year-old investment banking associate at Jefferies, passed away from a suspected drug overdose. McIntoch was working as much as 100 hours a week, the New York Post reported. Leo Lukenas, a BofA junior banker, died in May from a blood clot. Lukenas had worked 100-plus hour weeks before his passing. BofA in 2014 instituted policies to limit young banker hours, the junior execs were often pressured into lying about their workloads, the WSJ has reported.

To carry out its oversight program, BofA has long relied on what it calls a chief resource officer model. Under this model, BofA used mid-level executives, on one-year rotations, to allocate work to junior investment bankers, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

BofA has opted to shake up the model as it seeks to build the next generation of leaders, a person familiar with the situation said. The investment bank will now rely on senior bankers, working in permanent, full-time positions across sectors and regions, who will supervise young banker development as their CROs. 

Bank of America  is picking volunteers or assigning the role to the senior bankers, who are no longer dealmakers, the person said. BofA is seeking executives who have a very strong leadership quality, have managed teams and feel strongly about the evolution of junior bankers, they said.

“We want all of our junior bankers to have the best experience possible, learning from the teammates they work with and further benefiting from the career growth and development this role brings,” according to a BofA statement.  

BofA Securities, the investment banking division of Bank of America, employs thousands of bankers. It’s unclear how many are junior bankers. Young executives typically spend several years as a junior banker, including two as an analyst and two to three years as an associate, before they move up to vice president. At that point they usually work on a sector team, like consumer or technology or industrials.

BofA also cut roughly 150 junior investment banking roles, the person. The majority of people that were reduced were “mapped to new roles” outside of investment banking like financial analysis or strategic planning, the person said. “They were given the opportunity to move somewhere else,” they said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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