Two analysts at the New York Fed have asserted in a blog that "bank loan portfolios look a lot healthier than they did just a few years ago…". They've based this view on a Fed report, which tracked two key measures of bank loan performance: the "nonperforming loan ratio" and the "net charge-off rate" - the annualized dollars of final credit losses banks recognised on their loans, divided by the size of the loan portfolio. A combination of factors were behind this trend, including "a sustained period of growth and declining unemployment, the eventual resolution of loans that went bad during the Great Recession, and tighter post-crisis underwriting standards for some types of loans such as residential mortgages," they wrote. For the second time in three years, hackers have installed malware on point-of-sale systems at US discount chain Kmart and stolen customer credit card data, Finextra reports, crediting IT security blogger Brian Krebs. Kmart's parent company Sears Holdings said it recently discovered that cards previously used at Kmart stores were making unauthorised purchases. "A forensic investigation found payments data systems infected with malware that had gone undetected by the firm's anti-virus software. No details have been provided on how long systems were compromised for or how many of Kmart's 700-plus stores were affected," noted Finextra.