In order to issue trust preferred securities, a sponsor forms a trust by investing a nominal amount of cash to purchase all of the voting common stock of the trust. The trust issues nonvoting, mandatorily redeemable preferred securities to outside investors in exchange for cash. The proceeds received from the issuance of the preferred securities, together with the cash received for issuing the common stock to the sponsor, is then loaned to the sponsor in exchange for a note which has the same terms as the trust preferred securities. Trust preferred securities possesses characteristics of both equity and debt issues and are generally issued by bank holding companies.

No definition available.

Name:	pnc_CapitalSecuritiesOfSubsidiaryTrust
Namespace Prefix:	pnc_
Data Type:	xbrli:monetaryItemType
Balance Type:	credit
Period Type:	instant

Capital Securities of Subsidiary Trusts and Perpetual Trust Securities (Narrative) (Details) (USD $) In Millions, unless otherwise specified	1 Months Ended
	Mar. 31, 2013 PNC Preferred Funding Trust III [Member]	Apr. 23, 2013 Yardville Capital Trust VI [Member]	May 23, 2013 Fidelity Capital Trust III [Member]	Jun. 17, 2013 Sterling Financial Statutory Trust III [Member]	Jun. 17, 2013 Sterling Financial Statutory Trust IV [Member]	Jun. 17, 2013 Sterling Financial Statutory Trust V [Member]	Jun. 17, 2013 MAF Bancorp Capital Trust I [Member]	Jun. 17, 2013 James Monroe Statutory Trust III [Member]	Jul. 23, 2013 Fidelity Capital Trust II [Member]	Sep. 16, 2013 MAF Bancorp Capital Trust II [Member]
Debt Instrument [Line Items]
Trust preferred securities		$ 15	$ 30	$ 15	$ 15	$ 20	$ 30	$ 8	$ 22	$ 35
Fixed To Floating Rate Of Non Cumulative Exchangeable Trust securities	8.70%
Redemption of noncumulative exchangeable perpetual trust securities	$ 375