Several of America’s regional banks posted robust third-quarter earnings last week amid strong commercial loan demand.

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And as Reuters reported Friday (Oct. 16), these earnings add to indications that the U.S. economy is still resilient even in the face of increasing borrowing costs.

People have accepted global uncertainty as a new reality and are moving forward with operations,” PNC Financial CEO William Demchak said.

“The clouds are as dark as they ever were, but the economy’s still strong. People are investing into it,” he added.

According to Reuters, PNC was the leader in regional loan growth for the quarter at 14.2%, followed by U.S. Bancorp at 8%, M&T at 5.5% and Citizens Financial at 5.29%.

The report added that this healthy borrowing activity defied expectations of inflation driven by the Iran war and the Federal Reserve’s September interest rate increase could cool corporate capital expenditures and weaken the appetite for borrowing.

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But regional banking executives said loan pipelines were still strong and they had not noticed any slowing in demand so far. They are also trying to gauge how much of the loan growth was tied to huge expenditures related to artificial intelligence, Reuters said.

“This whole AI ecosystem build-out is kind of full-on. It’s a very strong dynamic, and that kind of cascades into a lot of the supply ecosystem,” Citizens CEO Bruce Van Saun said.

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