The fine print
As of June 30, 2026. 4,239 banks, each counted once.
EveryBank, the mean
Everything every bank owns, divided by 4,239. The largest bank holds $4.09 trillion of it. It is divided by 4,239 too.
EveryBank, the median
The bank in the middle. Half of American banks are smaller.
Our hometowns
Stick a pin in a map for the main office of every bank in America. That is 4,239 pins.
Find the middle: half the banks are north of it and half south, half east and half west. You end up out in the country in Pike County, Missouri. The nearest town is Eolia, about five miles away, population 472. That is our median hometown. Eolia does not have a bank.
Now take the average of all the pins. You end up out in the country again, in Franklin County, Missouri. The nearest town is New Haven, about seven miles away, population 2,414. That is our mean hometown. New Haven has three banks.
Mark Twain grew up about 40 miles north of Eolia, in Hannibal. He once quoted a line he credited to Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Our hometowns are the third kind.
Bank locations come from a 2026 government survey of every bank branch. Towns and populations come from the U.S. Census.
Checking & Deposits
Checking, savings, money market, CDs: $20.7 trillion across every bank. $1.75 trillion of it sits in offices overseas; the $4.48 billion on our home page counts U.S. offices only. Every bank here takes deposits; that is how a bank gets in.
Mean pays 1.86% on a dollar of deposits. Median pays 1.76%. The Fed pays banks 3.63% to park cash overnight. About a fifth of all deposits pay nothing. CDs pay the most, about 3.5% at the typical bank. What your deposits earn →
Loans & Mortgages
$13.9 trillion in loans, up from $8.9 trillion in 2016, spread over a third fewer banks.
Median lends on houses, buildings and businesses, roughly in that order. Mean adds credit cards and cars. The fastest-growing loan is to other lenders, finance companies and private credit funds: 3% of all loans in 2016, 12% now. The 32 banks over $100 billion hold 88% of it. The loan book →
Wealth & Trust
About 412 banks run a trust department. Between them they look after $43.7 trillion for other people, and hold $176 trillion more in custody. Five banks hold 94% of the custody.
The typical trust department, at a bank that has one, looks after $1.2 billion. The average includes the other 3,827 banks, which look after nothing. More banks are getting into it: 6.8% of banks in 2016, 9.7% now.
Capital Markets
US banks hold derivative contracts written on $300 trillion, 11 times everything the banks own. Split evenly, Mean EveryBank would carry $71 billion of them on a $6.2 billion balance sheet. Median carries none.
Four banks hold 80% of it. Ten hold 98%. Most of it is interest rates (69%) and currencies (25%). Only 77 banks trade currencies, 34 touch commodities and 30 touch stocks.
For the other thousand or so banks with any derivatives, it is interest rates: 396 have a swap, usually a hedge, and the typical swap book is about a tenth of the bank's size. The one thing spreading is credit protection: 1% of banks bought or sold it in 2016, 3.4% now.
Trading is a real business at 116 banks. They made $21.8 billion from it last quarter, and five of them made 88% of that.
The farm
Farmland and farm operating loans. No other loan brings Mean and Median this close. Meet Wanda Roff →
The herd
Cattle don't have a line on any report. They have Wanda.
917 banks, one in five, keep at least a quarter of their loans on the farm. 362 keep half.
The house
Home loans, as a share of everything the typical bank owns. 16.5% in 2016. 16.9% now. A dip in 2021, when deposits flooded in.
The street
Mortgages a bank could sell tomorrow: $1.4 trillion. The 32 largest banks hold two-thirds. The 3,191 smallest hold 2.3%.
Take deposits & make loans
Every bank here takes deposits. 34 of them lend nothing.
Owner-occupied commercial real estate
The dentist's office, the supply warehouse, the church.
Federal Home Loan Bank advances
Half the banks borrow from the Home Loan Banks. Median is still deciding. Deposits, second quarter →
Brokered deposits
Deposits a bank buys through a broker instead of gathering at a branch. 1,932 banks use them, usually a little: at the typical bank that does, they are 5% of deposits. Mean carries $290 million. Median doesn't buy any. Deposits, second quarter →
Credit cards
668 banks have any credit card loans on the books. Ten of them hold 92% of the balances. Mean has a card book because the average of everybody has one. Median has never issued a card. Credit quality, from Perry's desk →
Any interest-rate swap
The typical swap book is about a tenth of the bank's size, and it is usually a hedge. See Capital Markets.
Mortgage-banking income
Fees from making, selling and servicing home loans. Mortgage banking, second quarter →
Hold trading assets
187 banks hold anything in a trading book: $1.4 trillion, 89% of it at five banks. Median doesn't trade.