FDIC: Little change in banks' share of market for deposits

Fresh data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shows some modest shuffling in market share as measured by deposits among northern Nevada banks.

But whether the deposit figures mean anything these days is an open question.

The FDIC's annual study, which tracks deposits on a county-by-county basis as of June 30, shows Wells Fargo continues its dominance of northern Nevada markets.

Wells Fargo held 30.6 percent of the bank deposits in Washoe County and 22.6 percent of the market in Carson City.

In second place was Bank of America, with a 19.7 percent share of the market in Washoe County and a 13 percent share in Carson City.

(Reno-based Charles Schwab Bank, which collects deposits throughout the nation, held $8.5 billion in deposits on June 30. Because few of those deposits are local, most bankers back them out of the market-share calculations. The same goes for the $183.8 million in deposits held by Imperial Capital Bank in Carson City.)

While Wells Fargo and Bank of America maintained their top spots in the market-share study, both saw some slippage in the past year.

In Washoe County, Wells' share slipped from 32.2 percent a year ago to this year's 30.6 percent. In Carson City, however, its share of 22.6 percent this year was up from last year's 21.9 percent.

Bank of America, meanwhile, saw its share of the Washoe County market rise from last year's 18.5 percent to this year's 19.7 percent. Its share of the Carson City market fell to 13 percent from 14.3 percent a year ago.

Gains, meanwhile, were posted by some smaller banks Nevada Security was up by about 1.5 percent of market share in Washoe County, for instance, while Bank of Nevada climbed by 0.6 percent, First Independent was up by 0.4 percent, Heritage Bank increased by 0.2 percent and Business Bank rose by 0.1 percent.

Some bankers believe the deposit-share data doesn't signify much in an environment in which financial institutions offer dozens of products. Others, however, say there is nothing more important.

Chad Osorno, Wells Fargo's northern Nevada president, says he puts little stock in the deposit market-share data.

The numbers, he says, can swing dramatically as money moves through the banking system. A big escrow payment, for instance, might land in a bank for a day or two right when the FDIC takes its snapshot of deposit market share.

But more critically, Osorno says the plethora of relationships that banks now have with their customers mean that plain-vanilla data on deposits is less important.

His bank, for instance, pays close attention to the number of relationships it has with each of its banking households a number that was up more than 3 percent through June.

On the other end of the spectrum is Jerry Gregory, northern Nevada regional president for Business Bank of Nevada.

"This is what we live and die by," says Gregory. "We want to know we're doing our fair share of the business here."

Dave Funk, the president of Nevada Security Bank, says the importance of deposits is clear-cut: The growth of deposits determines the growth of lending.

And Bill Martin, the president of Nevada State Bank, says his bank's executives around the state watch deposit trends even more closely than they watch loan growth.

"Deposits are our raw material," he says.

And Martin says the FDIC statistics this year confirmed what individual bankers had been thinking for months.

"It's just very hard to gather deposits. People are in the stock market. People are in real estate," he says. In Washoe County, Nevada State Bank's deposits grew by $2 million year-over-year.

Another banker, Heritage Bank of Nevada President Stan Wilmoth, hadn't taken a look at the figures even after they'd been public for about five days.

The market-share data is mildly interesting, Wilmoth said, but the success of a bank depends more on the service it delivers than the measurement of its deposits.