Community Banks in America
A community bank in America is a small, locally owned and locally controlled depository institution that keeps every lending decision inside its own home market, and Community America Bank is a working example of the form: the Kansas City, Missouri bank that operates from its 12,300 square foot headquarters at the Lenexa, KS address, serves a defined footprint of the Kansas City metro, and holds roughly 10,000 deposit accounts and about 4,200 loan borrowers inside it.
That Lenexa, KS address matters to the search, because a community bank is measured by the radius inside which it knows its customer by name rather than by a balance sheet reported to a distant parent, and the directory below lists institutions of that kind by name, by location and by size, with the size band and the asset figure shown for each row so the list stays sortable and filterable.
Because the search lands on that one address first, the list opens with it and then groups the rest of the country by region and by size, so a reader can find a peer or a lender without scrolling past a wall of names, and the same 4 fields that carry the Lenexa, KS row carry every other row in the directory.
What the list of community banks covers
The list of community banks covers every depository institution in the United States that stays under the 10 billion dollar threshold in total assets, the band where the Federal Reserve treats a bank as community in scale and where a Community Banking Association treats a bank as a member, and it shows each bank by name, by location and by size, with the size band and the asset figure shown for each so the list stays sortable and filterable.
Each entry in the list carries 4 fields that a directory reader actually filters on:
- Bank name, written as the institution styles it.
- Location, the state and the metro market the branch sits in.
- Size band, the asset range the bank falls into.
- Total assets, the last reported figure that sets the band.
The 4 fields keep the list filterable, because a reader who wants a lender in a single state, or a peer under a single size band, can narrow the directory without leaving the page, and the size band and the asset figure shown for each are the 2 values that make that narrowing repeatable.
What Is a Community Bank and why size sets the line
What Is a Community Bank is answered by a hard size line and a local decision line, and the size line is the one this list sorts on, because the Federal Reserve groups community banks into 4 size bands under its Community Bank Supervision program, and the bands set both the supervisory touch and the market role of each bank in the list.
The 4 size bands the Federal Reserve uses, in ascending order, are the ones the list sorts on:
- Under 1 billion in assets, the smallest band.
- 1 billion to 3 billion in assets, the small mid-size band.
- 3 billion to 10 billion in assets, the large mid-size band.
- 10 billion to 50 billion in assets, the band that borders regional scale.
A bank in the 1 billion to 3 billion band carries a lighter supervisory load than a bank in the 10 billion to 50 billion band, and the difference in touch is what the size column in the list exists to flag, because the size band and the asset figure shown for each are the 2 values that tell a reader which regulatory lane a bank sits in before it reads anything else, and they also decide which Community Banking Associations a bank can join, the point that the section on the association that holds the network picks up next.
Where the 10 billion line sits
The 10 billion line sits where a bank stops being a local lender and starts reporting to a regional office, and it is the upper edge of the band this list treats as community, because above 10 billion in assets a bank is managed as a regional institution even when every branch still sits in one market, and the list keeps that upper edge visible so a reader does not mistake a 12 billion regional lender for a community bank. The size band and the asset figure shown for each are the 2 values that keep that edge honest across the directory.
The Community Banking Associations that hold the network
The Community Banking Associations that hold the network run at 2 levels, the national level and the state level, and both levels exist to keep the size bands in this list consistent, because the associations publish the asset figures the list cites and the band the list sorts on.
The American Bankers Association is the national trade body whose community banking division represents roughly 3,600 of the 4,600 community banks still chartered in the United States, and it is the association that keeps the bands in this list aligned with the Federal Reserve program. At state level, the same association pattern holds closer to home: the Kansas Bankers Association represents the community banks chartered in Kansas, and that is the body whose members include the bank at the Lenexa, KS address, because a state association is where a community bank of that size actually votes on rules, files for a charter change and reports the asset figure the directory shows. The list marks a bank's association membership with its size band and its asset figure, because those 2 values are what qualify a bank for the state body and for the national body at once, and Stories from member banks, the case notes that associations collect from their own institutions, are the raw material those 2 values come from.
How the list is organized and how to filter it
To read the list, filter it on the 3 axes the page gives it, name, location and size, because the directory is built as an index and a reader who has a single axis in mind should reach the bank in under 10 seconds, and the 3 axes are ordered the way a searcher actually asks, name first when the bank is known, location when the market is known and size when the peer is known.
- Filter by name to pull a single bank from the directory.
- Filter by location to pull every community bank in one state or one metro.
- Filter by size band to pull every bank in one asset range.
The 3 axes share the same 4 fields in each row, so a reader can stack them, and a search for a lender in the 1 billion to 3 billion band in one state narrows the directory to a short, answerable list, and the size band and the asset figure shown for each make the size axis exact instead of approximate.
What a reader should do with the list
Use the list in 3 ways that match the intent behind it, and start with the row that matches the search, the Lenexa, KS row for Community America Bank, because the page is a directory and the first job is to confirm the bank the search asked about before comparing it with peers.
- Confirm the Lenexa, KS row for Community America Bank before comparing it with peers in the same band.
- Compare the bank against other banks in the same size band to read its relative scale.
- Check the association column to see which state body and which national body the bank answers to.
The 3 uses keep the list honest, because a directory is only as useful as the reader's next question, and the size band and the asset figure shown for each are the values that make that next question answerable on the same page, with the name, location and size of every bank in the United States that stays under the 10 billion line all in one place.