Most Banks Pass on Congress’s Second Loan Loss Accounting Delay

When the pandemic shut down vast swaths of the economy last spring, the bankers at Mercantile Bank Corp. in Western Michigan realized it wasn’t the best time to also upend how they calculated losses on loans.

Along came Congress. Lawmakers in March 2020 made an unprecedented foray into the apolitical world of accounting and offered banks almost an extra year to comply with the biggest change to bank accounting in decades. The $4.4 billion asset, 44-branch bank seized on the extension, along with 44 other banks. When Congress offered a second delay in December, Mercantile took it again.

Mercantile ...