US Banking Statistics (2026)

As of the second quarter of 2026, there were 4,238 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions in the United States (3,728 commercial banks and 510 savings institutions), according to the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile (see the table below). That is down 41 from the prior quarter and 183 from a year earlier.

The quarterly churn tells the story: in Q2 2026, 36 institutions merged into others, four were sold to non-insured buyers, one bank failed, and four new banks opened. In Q1 2026 the count had fallen 59, with 54 mergers. The net direction is relentlessly downward, quarter after quarter.

The shrinking bank count is not new, it is a 40-year trend. The number of commercial banks peaked at 14,496 in 1984, and today's 4,238 insured institutions represent roughly a 71% decline from that high (see the chart and table below).

The driver is mergers, not failures. The Riegle-Neal Act of 1994 let banks branch across state lines, unleashing decades of consolidation. As the St. Louis Fed notes, the decline has been remarkably steady even as chartering, failures, and mergers swung wildly underneath.

For all the consolidation, the system keeps growing. FDIC-insured institutions held $26.5 trillion in total assets in Q2 2026, up $316.8 billion (1.2%) in the quarter and $1.5 trillion (5.9%) from a year earlier, and total loans and leases reached $13.9 trillion after expanding $243.5 billion (1.8%) in the quarter.

Annual loan growth was 6.8%, led by loans to nondepository financial institutions (up 22.4%) and margin and securities loans (up 29.7%), per the FDIC. So even as the number of charters falls, the balance sheet of American banking expands, with each surviving bank on average far larger than its 1984 predecessor.

Deposits are the lifeblood of banking, and FDIC-insured institutions held $20.7 trillion of them in Q2 2026, including $19.0 trillion in domestic offices. Domestic deposits rose $142.7 billion (0.8%) in the quarter, the eighth consecutive quarterly increase, recovering from the outflows of the 2023 turmoil.

Not all of that money is federally insured. An estimated 44.4% of deposits were uninsured as of June 30, 2026 (up from 42.3% a year earlier), and uninsured deposits drove all of the quarter's deposit growth. That figure matters because uninsured depositors are the ones most likely to flee at the first sign of trouble, as the 2023 failures showed.

US banking is dominated by a handful of giants. JPMorgan Chase is the largest, and as of June 30, 2026 it became the first US bank holding company above $5 trillion in assets ($5.02 trillion), followed by Bank of America ($3.5 trillion), Citigroup ($2.9 trillion), and Wells Fargo ($2.3 trillion), the so-called Big Four (see the chart and table below).

After them come the investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, then a long tail of super-regionals like U.S. Bancorp, PNC, and Truist. Figures are for bank holding companies; S&P Global's charter-level ranking puts JPMorgan Chase Bank NA at $4.4 trillion as of year-end 2025.

The asset pyramid is steep. The 50 largest US banks held a combined $25.6 trillion at the end of 2025, per S&P Global, meaning a few dozen institutions account for the vast majority of the system.

That concentration is the flip side of consolidation: as thousands of small banks merged away, assets pooled into ever-larger institutions. The four biggest banks alone hold well over half of the industry's assets, which is why their health is treated as systemic.

Banking is highly profitable right now. FDIC-insured institutions earned an aggregate $90.1 billion in Q2 2026, a record, up $9.7 billion (12.0%) from the prior quarter and $20.1 billion (28.7%) from a year earlier (see the chart and table below).

Quarterly profits have climbed from $66.7 billion in Q4 2024. The Q2 jump came from higher noninterest income (mostly trading revenue and fees, up $5.5 billion), one-time securities gains on equity transactions ($5.5 billion) and higher net interest income ($5.3 billion), per the FDIC.

Two ratios frame bank profitability. Return on assets was 1.37% in Q2 2026 (up from 1.26% in Q1 and 1.14% a year earlier), comfortably above the 1% level generally considered healthy, showing banks are squeezing solid profit from their balance sheets.

Net interest margin, the spread between what banks earn on loans and pay on deposits, was 3.32% in Q2 2026, up 1 basis point from the prior quarter and 6 basis points from a year earlier, after falling 8 basis points in Q1. Margins have stabilized while loan volume keeps growing.

Not every bank is a giant. Community banks, the 3,818 smaller, locally focused institutions that make up 90% of insured banks, earned $8.7 billion in Q2 2026, up 8.2% from the prior quarter and 18.1% from a year earlier, and 68.6% of them reported higher quarterly net income.

For the full year 2024, community banks earned $25.9 billion, down a modest 2.4% from the year before. They punch above their asset weight in small-business and agricultural lending, which is why regulators track their health separately in the Quarterly Banking Profile.

The physical footprint of banking is shrinking as customers move online. The FDIC Summary of Deposits counts 75,859 bank offices as of June 30, 2026, down from 76,097 in 2025, 76,727 in 2024 and 79,172 in 2022, and about 20% below the 94,725 of 2014 (all on the same BankFind basis).

In 2024 alone, about 2,200 branches closed while roughly 1,100 opened, a net loss of nearly 1,100, per the FDIC data. It was actually the smallest net decline since 2012, a sign the closure wave is slowing as banks settle on a leaner branch model.

Failures are rare but occasionally dramatic. The 2023 crisis produced five failures, including Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic, the second-, third-, and fourth-largest bank failures in US history by assets (see the table below).

The pace normalized afterward: two failures in 2024 (including Republic First Bank with $6 billion in assets) and two in 2025 (Pulaski Savings and the tiny Santa Anna National Bank, with just $63.8 million). 2026 has been busier, with six small-bank failures through mid-October, from Metropolitan Capital Bank & Trust in January to Nano Banc in September, per the FDIC Failed Bank List.

The FDIC maintains a confidential problem-bank list, and it fell by seven to 47 institutions in Q2 2026, about 1.1% of all banks, within the normal 1-2% range for non-crisis periods (see the table below). Unrealized losses on securities, a stress point since 2022, were $326.7 billion in Q2 2026 (5.5% of amortized cost), little changed from $325.1 billion the prior quarter.

Backing the system is the Deposit Insurance Fund, which stood at $161.1 billion on June 30, 2026 with a 1.48% reserve ratio, up 5 basis points in the quarter. That fund, financed by bank premiums, is what makes insured deposits safe even when a bank fails.

FDIC insurance is the reason bank runs are rare. The standard coverage is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category, so a couple with joint and individual accounts can be covered for far more than $250,000 at a single bank.

No depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds since the agency was created in 1933. The catch is the limit: with about 44% of deposits estimated to be uninsured, large uninsured balances are the ones exposed if a bank fails, which is why spreading cash across banks matters for big balances.

For savers, the takeaways are practical: keep any balance you care about under the $250,000 insured limit per bank per ownership category, and confirm your institution is FDIC-insured (nearly all are). Beyond that, cash in even a high-yield savings account tends to lag inflation over time.

Bank stocks, meanwhile, are a bet on this same system: record profits and steady consolidation have rewarded the largest banks, but margins, loan quality, and the next rate cycle drive the swings. As always, this is descriptive information, not investment advice, and diversification beats concentrating in any single sector.