S&P Global Market Intelligence released its annual rankings for 2020’s best-performing community banks with assets between $3 billion and $10 billion and community banks with assets less than $3 billion, as well as top-performing credit unions.
“Despite going through a challenging year filled with economic uncertainty, we have seen community banks and credit unions play a significant role in their regional markets, providing support and essential services needed in their local communities,” says Jimmy Pittenger, senior director of financial institutions at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “I’m thrilled to see these community banks and credit unions thrive in a challenging time and proud to recognize these top-performing local financial institutions in our annual rankings.”
South Dakota-based United National Corp. earned the top spot among the best-performing community banks with assets between $3 billion and $10 billion. It outperformed the industry median in four of the six ranking metrics analyzed and achieved the highest net interest margin among the top 50 banks in the group at 18.84 percent.
Among community banks with less than $3 billion in assets, Montana-based Yellowstone Bank ranked number one, up 32 spots from 2019. Founded more than a century ago, the bank has established itself as an active commercial, agricultural and real estate lender in Montana with eight brick-and-mortar branches and one facility operating across six cities. Yellowstone Bank was highly profitable during 2020, yielding a return on average tangible common equity, or ROATCE, of 21.4 percent while also growing operating revenues to 36.2 percent year over year.
S&P Global Market Intelligence’s best-performing Texas-based community banks with assets under $3 billion include:
5. Texas Bank Financial, Weatherford
10. Crockett National Bank, San Antonio
24. Brazos National Bank, Richwood
32. Titan Bank NA, Mineral Wells
43. Wallis Bank, Wallis
50. State Bank of Texas, Dallas
52. American Bank NA, Dallas
87. First State Bank, Louise
93. Citizens Bank NA, Abilene
S&P Global Market Intelligence’s best-performing Texas-based community banks with assets between $3 billion and $10 billion include:
4. Inwood Bancshares Inc., Dallas
5. Beal Financial Corp., Plano
6. South Plains Financial Inc., Lubbock
17. NexBank Capital Inc., Dallas
24. Triumph Bancorp Inc., Dallas
36. Amarillo National Bancorp Inc., Amarillo
41. Happy Bancshares Inc., Canyon
The 2020 Best-Performing Banks list was announced live on March 23 during a video-streaming presentation by S&P’s Nathan Stovall and Zain Tariq. The presentation included interviews with some of the executives whose banks made the list, among them Brett Magers, president of Rogersville, Missouri-based Legacy Bank & Trust. When asked about the factors that have led to his bank’s success, Magers delivered high praise for longtime Texas banker J. Pat Hickman, CEO of Amarillo-based Happy State Bank:
“[Our] revenue growth is really focused around groundwork that was laid years ago with a real focus on human resources—building a bank that’s the best place to work,” Magers told Stovall. “I went to an S&P conference about six or eight years ago that Pat Hickman from Happy State Bank spoke at…[Hickman is] an amazing guy and a really amazing banker with solid growth over a 30-year period. He articulated a lot of ideas that we [have developed] on the business front to run a principled bank that has a huge focus on human development. I think that is our edge. Every new line of business that we get into, whether it’s community-development lending or guaranteed lending, has been around great people that we’ve been able to bring in from other institutions who want to work at a place where they get a kind of employee ownership and some room to work. That’s been our focus over the past few years—building a place where people want to be and where the best bankers want to be, where they are really are passionate about what they do. This drives asset quality, growth and new opportunities on a daily basis.”
As noted above, Hickman’s Happy State Bank also made the 2020 S&P list.
Click here to access the full list of top-performing U.S. community banks and credit unions for 2020.
S&P Global Market Intelligence is a division of S&P Global, which provides credit ratings, benchmarks and analytics in the global capital and commodity markets, offering ESG solutions, deep data and insights on critical business factors. S&P Global has been providing essential intelligence that unlocks opportunity, fosters growth and accelerates progress for more than 160 years.
