By Matt Clark, President Federated Bank
It’s always encouraging to be greeted by a smiling face at your local community bank. What’s even better is to know that behind the warm greetings and smiling faces is a bank that’s financially healthy. But how can the average consumer really know about the financial health of any bank? One way that consumers can find out about how a bank (or credit union) is doing is by checking out the BauerFinancial ratings. BauerFinancial rates all banks and credit unions in the United States and makes these ratings available to the public for free.
Although there are many rating agencies within the financial industry, not all ratings are equal. One thing that sets BauerFinancial apart from other rating systems is its complete independence. They do not work for banks they rate, and banks cannot pay to be rated nor can they be excluded from rating. All US-chartered banks and federally insured credit unions with assets of $1.5 million or more are rated based on the reports that they are required to submit quarterly to government regulators. Bauer Financial performs its own analysis of the raw data in these reports in order to determine each bank’s star rating.
Bauer Financial releases its ratings on a quarterly basis, typically in early March, June, September, and December. Institutions are given one of the following ratings: 5-Star (‘Superior’), 4-Star (‘Excellent’), 3 ½-Star (‘Good’), 3-Star (‘Adequate’), 2-Star (‘Problematic’), 1-Star (‘Troubled’), and Zero-Stars, which is the lowest rating and indicates significant problems. BauerFinancial has been performing its ratings since 1983. They have established themselves as a credible and reliable rating agency. If fact, as noted on their website, 98% of all banks that failed since January 1, 2010 were rated Zero-Stars by BauerFinancial.
So you may be wondering how Federated Bank rates. Since June of 2014, BauerFinancial has given Federated Bank a 5-Star (‘Superior’) rating, which is the highest rating given. Receiving this rating also means that they are included in BauerFinancial’s Recommended Report with all 4-Star and 5-Star institutions. If you are interested in viewing the ratings of other banks or in reading more about BauerFinancial, you can visit their website (bauerfinancial.com).
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