At the time, the company offered yen-deposit accounts, investment trusts, card loans, and bank payments.

In terms of assets, securities represent 10.49% of them about twice as much as personal and credit card loans.

Earnings from credit cards also increased with card loans up by 30 percent to $10.3 billion.

Last year, eight of the top nine commercial banks ranked by return on assets specialized in credit card loans.

Costs begin with the interest banks pay for money to finance their card business, estimated by Nilson at 7.41 percent of card loans outstanding.

In mid-1994, the bank tightened its lending standards, but the $500 million in card loans booked since then have also had higher-than-expected losses.

At the same time, Citigroup chose to concentrate on areas like home mortgages rather than on the riskier credit card loans.

Losses are running at about 5 percent of all card loans this year, up from 3.8 percent last year, according to the Nilson Report.

In 1993, cards grew by 13 percent, card loans by 15 percent and card charges by 20 percent.

He said that about $10 billion of credit card loans are now for sale, "and I expect several transactions will be announced before year-end."