Deposits

Almost a fifth of U.S. banks are offering savings rates of 2% or more, a huge spike from a year ago, according to new data. Banks are paying more out of fear their customers will flee to competitors offering higher rates.

While branch closings remain the norm throughout the industry, the hunt for suddenly scarce deposits is prompting some community banks to move in the opposite direction and expand their branch networks.

The McLean, Virginia-based bank is building its deposit base — in contrast with many banks that are starting to see outflows. But the growth is accompanied by rising interest expenses, which are expected to cut modestly into profit margins this year.

The Birmingham, Alabama, bank expects up to $5 billion in additional deposit declines in the first half of 2023 but is hopeful for potential growth in funding later this year.

The parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, which has been mired in deposit challenges, expects little near-term change in the deployment of venture capital dollars, which executives say will keep putting pressure on SVB's balance sheet.

The Buffalo, New York, bank expects outstanding loans to grow by as much as 9% in 2023. Deposits, on the other hand, could fall.

The Dallas-based bank, whose deposit base is more commercial-focused, has seen significant outflows in deposits over the past year. But last quarter's declines were "better than we expected," and there are other signs that the environment may moderate this year, its CFO said.

The Canadian banking giant also announced that Nandita Bakhshi, the San Francisco bank's CEO, will join the board of directors of its U.S. holding company and serve as a special advisor on integration.

The Mississippi bank said it fell short of funding its loans with deposits in the fourth quarter of 2022. This year, it plans to narrow its focus to core relationship lending.

The New York bank reported a 17% drop-off in deposits during the fourth quarter as it sought to reduce its concentration in the digital currency realm. It expects its balance sheet to stabilize in the second half of 2023.

Further interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve will force Bank of America to continue repricing deposits, which fell 6.5% in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier, executives said.

When U.S. banks fell like dominoes during the Great Depression, the cause was often a classic run: Depositors withdrew cash en masse amid fears that lenders were amassing huge losses on bad loans and investments. The cryptocurrency era just put a new twist on that.

At the start of 2022, banks sat atop a flood of deposits. But as the year progressed, they faced greater pressure to pay higher rates, and the trends that drove the rapid shift show no signs of abating.

The agency is needlessly raising banks' costs at a time of severe economic uncertainty.

While Silvergate said this month it has "a resilient balance sheet and ample liquidity," and analysts call its financials sound, the bank is today contending with a question as difficult as the one that led it to crypto in the first place: whether the experiment was worth it.

After focusing its de novo branching plans on the Carolinas in recent years, the Cincinnati-based bank is ready to shift its attention to Florida and — eventually — to Nashville and Atlanta.

The Connecticut bank plans to add interLINK to its diverse stable of deposit-gathering businesses. A community bank in Texas had previously reached a deal to purchase the platform, but that transaction fell apart in September.

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