FDIC Issues Quarterly Banking Profile for Third Quarter 2015

FDIC Community Banks

The FDIC published its most recent Quarterly Banking Profile, summarizing the latest financial results for the banking industry. According to the FDIC’s findings, community banks reported net income of $5.2 billion in the third quarter of 2015, up 7.5% from the previous year. The Profile’s featured article – Financial Performance and Management Structure of Small, Closely Held Banks – indicates that closely held banks are outperforming widely held banks in operational efficiency and financial performance. The FDIC’s research suggests that management structures in which a bank’s managers are members of the ownership group or ownership insiders prove beneficial in that principal-agent problems are minimized because the “manager can be expected to act in the interests of the owners because the manager is an owner.” Although the Profile comments on the disadvantages of the organizational form of closely held banks, including succession issues and difficulty in raising capital, the researchers conclude that the “favorable comparisons between closely held and widely held community banks suggest that the closely held organizational form is by no means an impediment to performance, and may well be one of the keys to the success of closely held banks.”