We provide evidence that banks classify fixed-rate debt investment securities as held to maturity (HTM) rather than as available for sale (AFS) when HTM classification provides preferred financial accounting and regulatory capital treatments, not because they have a distinct economically motivated intent and ability to hold the securities to maturity. Specifically, we document predictably divergent security classifications by three categories of banks that differ in whether the regulatory accumulated other comprehensive income (AOCI) filter, which removes AOCI from Tier 1 capital, applies in four subperiods of our 2012–2022 sample period. The boundaries of the subperiods reflect changes in the AOCI filter’s applicability in 2014 and 2019 and the sharp rise in interest rates beginning in late 2021. We further find that the bank categories differ in the interest rate risk of their AFS securities and the extents to which they economically hedge that risk using derivatives and uninsured deposits.

In the wake of the financial crisis, policymakers expressed the concern that the incurred loss model delays loan loss recognition to economic stress periods and thereby exacerbates banks’ lending contraction during these periods. Addressing this concern, the FASB issued Accounting Standards Update 2016-13, which requires large public banks to accrue for loan losses using the current expected credit loss (CECL) approach starting in January 2020. We hypothesize and find that banks that adopted CECL prior to the COVID-19 pandemic increased loan loss provisions and reduced loan growth during the accompanying recession more than other banks. The lending contraction is stronger for adopting banks with low regulatory capital and low loan impairment and is primarily driven by commercial loans. Lastly, we find that counties in which CECL-adopting banks have higher market share experience larger increases in unemployment rates during the recession and slower subsequent recoveries. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.