The number of banks in the US placing restraints on lending continued to fall in the third quarter, according to a survey of senior loan officers by the country’s central bank, as improving economic conditions sparked a return to pre-crisis attitudes on issuance.

Only 15% of respondents to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's latest quarterly survey on bank lending, which polled 80 senior loan officers at US banks, said they had tightened commercial and industrial issuance in the three months to September 30. This is the lowest amount since the Fed's July 2007 survey.