Accounting Policies (Tables)

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2020

Accounting Policies [Abstract]

Recently Adopted Accounting Standards

Recently Adopted Accounting Standards

Accounting Standards Update (ASU)	Description	Financial Statement Impact
Credit Losses- ASU 2016-13 Issued June 2016 Codification Improvements - ASU 2019-04 Various improvements related to Credit Losses (Topics 1, 2 and 5) Issued April 2019 Targeted Transition Relief - Credit Losses - ASU 2019-05 Issued May 2019 Codification Improvements - ASU 2019-11 Issued November 2019	• Commonly referred to as the CECL standard. • Replaces measurement, recognition and disclosure guidance for credit related reserves (i.e., the allowance for loan and lease losses (ALLL) and the allowance for unfunded loan commitments and letters of credit) and Other than Temporary Impairment (OTTI) for debt securities. • Requires the use of an expected credit loss methodology; specifically, current expected credit losses for the remaining life of the asset will be recognized starting from the time of origination or acquisition. • Methodology applies to loans, net investment in leases, debt securities and certain financial assets not accounted for at fair value through net income. It also applies to unfunded lending related commitments except for unconditionally cancellable commitments. • In-scope assets are presented at the net amount expected to be collected after the deduction or addition of the ACL from the amortized cost basis of the assets. • Requires inclusion of expected recoveries of previously charged-off amounts for in-scope assets. • Requires enhanced credit quality disclosures including disaggregation of credit quality indicators by vintage. • Requires a modified retrospective approach through a cumulative-effect adjustment to retained earnings at adoption.	• Adopted January 1, 2020 under the modified retrospective approach. The cumulative-effect adjustment to retained earnings totaled $671 million at adoption. • Amended presentation and disclosures are required prospectively. Refer to the disclosures in this Note 1, Note 3 Investment Securities, Note 4 Loans and Related Allowance for Credit Losses and Note 10 Total Equity and Other Comprehensive Income for additional information. • With the adoption of CECL, we discontinued the accounting for purchased impaired loans and elected the one-time fair value option election for some of these loans and certain residential real estate collateral dependent loans. Loans that were previously accounted for as purchased impaired where the fair value option election was not made are now accounted for as purchased credit deteriorated (PCD) loans. • There was no impact to the recorded investment of our investment securities or loans, except for our PCD loan portfolio. Accounting for these loans as PCD required an adjustment to the remaining accretable discount and recorded investment in addition to the impact on ACL due to the adoption of CECL methodology. • Refer to Table 35 for a summary of the impact of the CECL standard adoption.
Accounting Standards Update (ASU)	Description	Financial Statement Impact
Codification Improvements - ASU 2019-04 Topic 3: Codification Improvements to ASU 2017-12 and Other Hedging Items Issued April 2019	• Targeted improvements related to:      - Partial-term fair value hedges of interest rate risk      - Amortization of fair value hedge basis adjustments      - Disclosure of fair value hedge basis adjustments      - Consideration of the hedged contractually specified interest rate under the hypothetical derivative method      - Application of a first-payments-received cash flow hedging technique to overall cash flows on a group of variable interest payments      - Update to transition guidance for ASU 2017-12 • This ASU permits a one-time transfer out of held to maturity securities to provide entities the opportunity to hedge fixed rate, prepayable securities under a last of layer hedging strategy (although an entity is not required to hedge such securities subsequent to transfer).	• Adopted January 1, 2020. • As permitted by the eligibility requirements in this guidance, at adoption we elected to transfer debt securities with an amortized cost of $16.2 billion (fair value of $16.5 billion) from held to maturity to the available for sale portfolio. The transfer resulted in a pretax increase to AOCI of $306 million. There were no other impacts to PNC's consolidated financial statements from the adoption of this guidance.
Accounting Standards Update (ASU)	Description	Financial Statement Impact
Goodwill - ASU 2017-04 Issued January 2017	• Eliminates Step 2 from the goodwill impairment test to simplify the subsequent measurement of goodwill under which a loss was recognized only if the estimated implied fair value of the goodwill is below its carrying value. • Requires impairment to be recognized if the reporting unit's carrying value exceeds the fair value.	• Adopted January 1, 2020. • The adoption of this standard did not impact our consolidated results of operations or our consolidated financial position.

Accounting Standards Update (ASU)	Description	Financial Statement Impact
Reference Rate Reform - ASU 2020-04 Issued March 2020	• Provides optional expedients and exceptions for applying generally accepted accounting principles to contracts, hedging relationships, and other transactions that reference LIBOR or another reference rate expected to be discontinued because of reference rate reform. • Includes optional expedients related to contract modifications that allow an entity to account for modifications (if certain criteria are met) as if the modifications were only minor (assets within the scope of ASC 310, Receivables), were not substantial (assets within the scope of ASC 470, Debt), and/or did not result in remeasurements or reclassifications (assets within the scope of ASC 842, Leases, and other Topics) of the existing contract. • Includes optional expedients related to hedging relationships within the scope of ASC 815, Derivatives & Hedging, whereby changes to the critical terms of a hedging relationship do not require dedesignation if certain criteria are met. In addition, potential sources of ineffectiveness as a result of reference rate reform may be disregarded when performing some effectiveness assessments. • Allows for a one-time election to sell, transfer, or both sell and transfer debt securities classified as held to maturity that reference a rate affected by reference rate reform and that are classified as held to maturity before January 1, 2020. • Guidance in this ASU is effective as of March 12, 2020 through December 31, 2022.	• Adopted March 12, 2020, will apply prospectively. • As of September 30, 2020, we have not yet elected any optional expedients related to contract modifications or hedging relationships as outlined in this ASU. However, we plan to elect these optional expedients in the future. • During the second quarter of 2020, we elected to transfer all debt securities classified as held to maturity that are indexed to LIBOR to the available for sale portfolio. All securities were classified as held to maturity prior to January 1, 2020. These securities had an amortized cost and fair value of $49 million and $48 million, respectively, as of the transfer date. See Note 3 Investment Securities for more information.

Impact of the CECL Standard Adoption

Impact of the CECL Standard Adoption

In millions	December 31, 2019		Transition Adjustment			January 1, 2020
Allowance for credit losses
Allowance for loan and lease losses
Commercial	$	1,812	$	(304	)	$	1,508
Consumer	930		767			1,697
Total allowance for loan and lease losses	2,742		463			3,205
Unfunded lending related commitments	318		179			497
Other	—		19			19
Total allowance for credit losses	$	3,060	$	661		$	3,721
In millions	December 31, 2019		Transition Adjustment			January 1, 2020
Impact to retained earnings (a)	$	42,215	$	(671	)	$	41,544

(a) Transition adjustment includes the increase in the total ACL of $.7 billion and the impact of the fair value option election of $.2 billion, offset by the tax impact of $.2 billion.