RankingBanking’s Best Banks: Back to the Basics
This year’s list, which ranks the 300 largest publicly traded banks, explores the importance of strong core deposits and local decision-making to the top performers.
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Written by
Jackie Stewart
Executive Editor
Jackie Stewart is the Executive Editor of Bank Director. She is responsible for writing and editing features for the company’s weekly newsletter and quarterly print magazine and oversees sponsored research reports. Jackie is particularly interested in community banking and M&A activity. She previously served in a number of reporter and editor roles with American Banker, including executive editor of American Banker Magazine. She has also covered retirement issues for Kiplinger and spent two years teaching middle school literacy in the Bronx, New York, through Teach For America.
Jackie Stewart
Executive Editor
I started writing about banks more than a decade ago, and a constant in my career has been talk about the significant upheaval the industry is facing. And there have been a lot of changes: post-financial crisis regulations, massive consolidation, Covid-19 and historically low interest rates followed by crippling inflation. Now, banks are staring down the potential effects of artificial intelligence and stablecoin.
Despite all of this, another thing remains true: Good old-fashioned banking never goes out of style. And that is the art of lending money to borrowers at higher rates than you are paying out for deposits. A bank’s success in this can be found in its net interest margin (NIM).
The results for this year’s RankingBanking offer a nod to this. The top 25 performers had a stronger median net interest margin than the rest of the institutions featured on the list.
“I think the banks that connect the loan and deposit relationship together” are the ones that are most successful, says Kara Baldwin, a partner and the financial services audit lead at Crowe, a professional services firm. “So, it’s saying, ‘We’ll give you this great loan, and we’ll structure it in this way that you are looking for, but you need to bring the deposit relationship.’”
RankingBanking, which is sponsored by Crowe, is Bank Director’s annual analysis of the 300 largest publicly traded banks. This year’s ranking uses year-end 2025 results and is based on metrics related to profitability, capital and credit quality. It is compiled by Piper Sandler & Co. using data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Of course, other factors are important in banking. Generating strong fee income can provide stability to a bank’s earnings, for instance. But the spread income remains an important component for banks, with the strength of a bank’s deposits playing a significant role. “I don’t think it’s a secret that if you have strong, stable deposits, you’ll have an easier time with expanding your margin and expanding your profitability,” says Patrick Vernon, an advisory partner at Crowe Advisory. That issue is explored in more depth in this report.
This year, we also examined how different regional economies can affect the financial results of banks. Additionally, we wrote profiles on two banks, Commerce Bancshares and SouthState Bank Corp. And new this year, Bank Director broke out the institutions by state, so our readers could more easily see where they landed in the overall ranking of 300 institutions.
Click here for this year’s full report.
| The ranking identifies the top 25 U.S. banks, and ranks all 300 by asset size: |
|---|
| The Top 25 Banks |
| $50 Billion and Above |
| $5 Billion to $50 Billion |
| Less Than $5 Billion |
| This year, Bank Director broke out the RankingBanking list by state. The listing reflects each bank’s standing within the full ranking of the 300 largest publicly traded banks and does not represent a separate, by-state analysis. |
|---|
| Northeast |
| Midwest |
| South |
| West |
| U.S. Territories |
WRITTEN BY
Jackie Stewart
Executive Editor
Jackie Stewart is the Executive Editor of Bank Director. She is responsible for writing and editing features for the company’s weekly newsletter and quarterly print magazine and oversees sponsored research reports. Jackie is particularly interested in community banking and M&A activity. She previously served in a number of reporter and editor roles with American Banker, including executive editor of American Banker Magazine. She has also covered retirement issues for Kiplinger and spent two years teaching middle school literacy in the Bronx, New York, through Teach For America.