This article does an analysis of regional banks in the PNW. It provides statistical info re. each bank's current stability. It will provide a guide as to whether its worth buying shares in a particular bank.
Local banks' struggles don't rattle most customers
Our quarterly look at the health of local banks
By Drew DeSilver
Seattle Times business reporter
Denise McKittrick-Little had been a loyal and happy customer of Rainier Pacific Bank for nine years when regulators last month shut it down and transferred its business to Oregon's Umpqua Bank.
"I was a little concerned when I heard," the Graham woman said recently outside one of the bank's Federal Way branches. "But then I talked with (bank staff) and I asked 'Are you happy with the change?' and they said they were happy and they weren't leaving, so I'm not either."
Brad Glaberson had been a loyal and happy customer of Evergreen Bank for 10 years when it, too, ran into trouble. But his experience was quite different: When the struggling bank pulled his company's credit line and customer service deteriorated, Glaberson took his business elsewhere — a few months before Evergreen's January closure.
"It was blatantly obvious to me that things were going bad with them," Glaberson said. "All of a sudden key people started leaving, and at one point it got really nasty on their end."
Across the country, the rolling bank crisis is testing relationships between banks and their customers.
That's especially true in Washington, where seven banks have been taken over by regulators since the start of 2008, several others are teetering and nearly a third of all state-based institutions are operating under stricter regulatory oversight.
Customers of troubled banks must choose whether to stick around; if their bank goes under, they have to judge whether to stay with an unfamiliar successor.
People with money to invest must decide whether to park it at distressed banks that often pay more on CDs and savings accounts to attract new deposits.
Reactions are divided. "You've got consumers who get very concerned if they see their bank in the paper and they'll pull their money out, but you've also got people who know they're protected up to $250,000 (by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) and they'll move their money to capture the higher rates," said Joe Waites, a partner in Minerva Consulting, a Georgia-based firm that helps troubled banks.
The latest edition of The Seattle Times' quarterly report on the health of Washington banks shows they continue to sort themselves out into three broad groups: the well-capitalized, the warily watchful and the walking wounded.
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seattletimes.nwsource.com |
