Is Capital One the Leader Among Consumer Lenders?

“The banks are all cheap; Capital One is the

cheapest of all. It is the one that I think

offers most upside and I have felt that for 60 points.”

Jim Cramer, CNBC

December 26, 2025 | Is Capital One Financial (COF) the top consumer lender in the US? Is the stock cheap? Jim Cramer at CNBC is certainly pounding the table. We like COF, but liked Discover Financial more. Like the way we feel about BBT vs Truist, the former a beloved exemplar destroyed by M&A leaving us with confused mediocrity and an absurd name in the latter.

Capital One has experienced significant issues with expansion into non-credit card lending areas, most notably a major failure in mortgage lending and ongoing performance issues and regulatory scrutiny related to auto loans and savings accounts. And then there was the COF expansion into energy lending in 2020, which exposed them to risks from volatile energy prices, leading to a need for waivers from regulators (CFTC) for increased derivatives exposure.

In this Christmas week edition of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we focus on the top independent bank lenders who specialize in providing unsecured credit to consumers. Our latest conversation with Julie Hyman of YahooFinance is below.

The top four banks by assets plus Capital One account for 50% of all consumer loans in the US, but the smaller players in the consumer specialization group are also among the top performing stocks in the WGA Bank Top 50. We just added one of these, LendingClub Corp (LC), to our surveillance group, as discussed below for subscribers to our Premium Service. Please do note that our Winter Sale ends on New Year’s Eve 2025. 

In the past six months, LC has been the best performing bank in the US, exceeding even SoFi Technology (SOFI) in the stock performance rankings. COF has also performed well over the full year, but the poor GAAP earnings performance has not helped the stock – even with Jim Cramer of CNBC pounding the table for the largest monoline credit card issuer. The poor earnings performance at COF is the result of noise from the merger with Discover Financial, once upon a time one of the top performing US banks.

Source: Google Finance (12/24/25)

Capital One's third quarter 2025 earnings were not weak; in fact, they beat analyst expectations with strong top-line growth and adjusted earnings. The perception of weakness stems from high non-recurring expenses related to the Discover acquisition. But Jim Cramer is right about the value proposition, we just wonder about COF's tendency to wander away from consumer credit.

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