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The four largest U.S. banks are on track to capture 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 U.S. banks by deposits and assets, reported a combined profit of about $88 billion in the first nine months of 2024. This emerges from calculations by the Financial Times, which are based on figures from industry tracker BankRegData.

Together, they account for 44 percent of the U.S. banking sector’s profits – the highest share in the first nine months of the year since 2015 – even though the pool includes more than 4,000 other banks in the country.

Including US Bank, PNC and Truist, the seven largest banks by deposits generated nearly 56 percent of all bank profits 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 comes from earnings reports to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a banking regulator, and covers only earnings reported by U.S. banking institutions.

Banks may also include different companies in the data they report, and larger banks such as JPMorgan and BofA include investment banking and trading revenues that many smaller banks do not compete with.

While the numbers don’t perfectly match the earnings banks report to investors, they show the increasing importance of size in the banking sector as it grapples with higher regulatory, technology, marketing and operating costs. Larger companies can spread these costs across more customers.

“Once you’re well below the largest banks, it becomes really difficult to make the necessary investments and gain the same level of recognition,” said Oppenheimer banking analyst Chris Kotowski.

“We are a very mobile society, especially since Covid. A lot of people moving from New York to Florida, for example. Do you really need a different bank in Florida than in New York?”

The United States has an unusually fragmented banking system, in large part because consolidation was delayed by restrictions on interstate banking that were not lifted until the 1980s.

The dominant position of the largest U.S. banks has fueled calls for greater consolidation among smaller banks to become more competitive.

Deals have slowed in recent years, but there are hopes that the new Trump administration could adopt more permissive policies.

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

But the big banks’ main competitors are increasingly non-banks, including private lending firms that offer bank-like services.

Financial institutions like Apollo, Affirm and Rocket Mortgage have become increasingly influential lenders to businesses, homebuyers and consumers, even though these loans are often funded by banks.

In the mortgage market, nonbanks now service more than half of U.S. home loans, up from 11 percent in 2011.

In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called tech giant Apple “effectively” acting as a bank by holding, moving and lending money.