More people are paying attention to America’s regional banks than ever before. But it is difficult to work out the state of their balance-sheets. Recent data from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a regulator, offer a glimpse. Our analysis suggests several regional banks are struggling with flighty deposits, interest-rate mismatches and pricey borrowing. Even if none are about to collapse, the outlook is grim.
Start with deposits. Before the panic in March, savers were moving money to high-yielding money-market funds. The fall of Silicon Valley Bank (svb) sped up the trend. Accounts with balances over the $250,000 federal-insurance limit fell by nearly 5% across the banking system—and by more than 11% at midsized lenders. At PacWest, an institution in California, total deposits dropped by 17% and uninsured ones by more than half.
Many banks are still sitting on billions in unrealised losses. The data show that America’s banks in aggregate have more than…
This article was written by and originally published on www.economist.com