Not surprising to me -- Capital One has a small but still relatively "big" exposure to cobranded credit cards in a market that is absolutely tanking: notably, retail chains. Capital One relies on ABS investors for a good amount of credit lending, and with a shrinking market they're not showing the returns of some other ABS portfolios out there. I can't find any public releases about it that are recent but even the most recent public release back in June 2017 talks about this a little bit.
If Capital One can't get as much interest in securitizing credit cards, they still need capitalization for the people using those cards. If you aren't using it, someone else will, and those folks may be more likely to actually earn back an investor's profit.
I am curious if Capital One's credit limit increases are related at all to style of spend (in-store swipe versus online transaction) because Capital One is so heavily invested in cobranded store cards (see list of stores here).
