It took a huge slump in the energy industry to make it happen, but big banks are finally adding to their rainy-day funds again. The big national banks added a total of $777 million to their reserves for soured loans in the first quarter. That is up from the $296 million they added in the fourth quarter of 2015 and marks a sharp break with the years before that. Before late 2015, the banks had released funds from their reserves every quarter since 2009—$795 million in releases in last year’s first quarter, for instance. Banks “build” loan-loss reserves when they add new provisions to their reserves for soured loans to a greater extent than they write off bad loans as uncollectable, freeing up the reserves associated with them. A “release” is the opposite—charge-offs outweigh new provisions. The new reserve builds are driven […]