Bauer Financial Bank Star ratings and Bank Rate’s Safe & Sound ratings are the two most valuable resources a regular consumer has to help determine whether your bank is in good shape or not.
Bauer Financial
Bauer Financial rates both banks and credit unions on a scale of zero to five stars, with five stars being the best. Their search tool is a little cumbersome (don’t use any acronyms, it has to be the full name) but otherwise pretty valuable in determining how safe your bank is. For example, I put in M&T Bank (Manufacturers and Traders Trust of Buffalo, NY) and they were three and a half stars by Bauer with additional information. Clicking on more information gives you an opportunity to pay for reports.
BankRate Safe & Sound
BankRate’s Safe & Sound rating is another service you can use to assess the safety of your bank. They also have a five point rating system with additional areas for N/A type ratings. Again, you can search by Banks/Thrifts versus Credit Unions, and a search of M&T Bank yielded a score of three stars and a Safe & Sound CAEL rating of 3. CAEL stands for Capitalization, Asset quality, Earnings and Liquidity and it’s a 1-5 scale with 1 being the best. M&T appears to be in about the middle.
Using those two rating services will give you a pretty good handle on how safe your bank is. One word of caution, the data is updated only quarterly. (finally, if your bank is FDIC insured, keep less than $100k and save yourself some time)
Tags: Baeur Financial, BankRate
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