We had solid deposit growth and our rates paid is now at 5 basis points. Loans on a linked quarter basis increased seasonally, driven by U.S. consumer credit card. Our card issuance remains very strong at 1.2 million new cards in the fourth quarter of ’14 of which approximately 67% of those were issued to existing customers. We look at all of 2014, we issued 15% more cards in ’14 than ’13, and increased the percentage of the issuance to our existing customers which is consistent with the overall strategy. Credit quality improved again as our US credit card loss rate fell to 2.7% and continues to have a very strong risk adjusted margin at just below 10%.
Our Merrill Edge brokerage assets grew $114 billion which is up 18% year-over-year on new accounts, strong accounts flows as well as higher market levels. Our mobile banking customers reached 16.5 million in the fourth quarter and now 12% of all customer deposit transactions are done through mobile devices. We adjust for portfolio divestitures combined debit and credit purchase volume was up 4% relative to the fourth quarter of ’13 and if we back fuel out it was up 5%.
To move to Consumer Real Estate Services on the Slide 11. The improvement in the results compared to the third quarter of ’14 was driven by the third quarter of ’14 DOJ settlement which impacted expense, provision as well as income tax. Revenues did increase slightly over the third quarter of ’14, while expense even after we exclude litigation declined from the third quarter as both the former cost on the production side and cost on the delinquent loan servicing side were down from the third quarter. Core production revenue and servicing fees were both stable compared to the third quarter of ’14, while servicing income did benefit from better MSR hedging results. On the production front, first mortgage retail originations were stable with the third quarter of ’14 at $11.6 billion and the pipeline was consistent with the third quarter of ’14 as well, albeit up on a year-over-year basis.
On Home Equity, we’re the number one lender in line originations during the quarter with $3.4 billion in line with the third quarter of ’14 and up north of 70% on a year-over-year basis. The credit quality of those second-lien originations remains very strong with average cycle scores over 790 in combined loan-to-value ratios at less than 60%. Expenses in the segment did include $262 million of litigation cost in the fourth quarter versus $5.3 billion that we saw in the third quarter of ’14. We continue to work through and resolve RMBS securities litigation matters including this quarter the FHLB of San Francisco matter. With the resolution of that we now estimate that we’ve resolved approximately 98% of the unpaid principal balance of all RMBS as to which RMBS securities litigation has been filed or threatened against all Bank of America related entities. LAS expense ex-litigation this quarter was just over 1.1 billion, as we achieved our first quarter of 2015 goal a quarter ahead of schedule. Importantly, the number of 60 plus days delinquent loans that we have dropped to 189,000 units which is down 32,000 or 14% from the third quarter of 2014.
We turn to Slide 12, global wealth and investment management delivered another strong quarter. Pretax margin was strong, net income was just over $700 million but was down from the fourth quarter of ’13 and solid fee-based growth was offset by lower net interest income and higher expense. Record asset management fees offsets the weakness we saw in transactional activity and still drove a 7% increase in non-interest revenue relative to the fourth quarter of ’13. Our asset management fees now represents 45% of revenue within the segment up from 40% a year ago.
