Bank Deposit Growth Settles Down After COVID

Arvest Bank of Fayetteville extended its long run as the state’s deposit leader with modest deposit growth of 3.6%.

(A correction has been made to this article. See end for details.)

Arkansas banks added more than $5 billion in deposits in the 12 months that ended June 30, reaching $95.6 billion, according to a new report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The FDIC released its annual summary of deposits, a deep dive into the deposits that it insures, on Sept. 16. It showed that statewide deposit growth slowed to 5.5% after two consecutive years in which COVID stimulus cash fueled unusually strong deposit growth.

Arkansas’ deposit growth was a hair above the national trend of 5.3%. Domestic deposits nationally topped $18 trillion.

Arvest Bank of Fayetteville extended its long run as the state’s deposit leader with modest deposit growth of 3.6%. Its $13.8 billion in deposits represent 14.4% of all deposits in Arkansas.

Publicly traded Simmons Bank of Pine Bluff leapfrogged over Bank of America and Bank OZK to become No. 2 in statewide deposits, adding more than $1 billion to reach $7.86 billion.

Bank OZK of Little Rock, also publicly traded, reported a decline of 9% in Arkansas deposits in the year that ended June 30; that followed a decline of 22% during the previous 12-month period.

Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, saw its Arkansas deposits decline by almost 20%, taking back most of the 26% increase in deposits it booked the previous year. BOA reduced its branch network in Arkansas from 19 in mid-2021 to 16, and two of those branches were in Pulaski County, where its deposits tumbled by 23%. Total Pulaski County deposits shrank by almost 6.7%, attributable to a combined reduction of more than $2 billion by BOA, OZK and Arvest. (See Countywide Bank Deposits list)

Evolve Bank & Trust of West Memphis reported notable deposit growth, more than doubling to $1.06 billion and moving from No. 34 to No. 18 statewide. 

Evolve’s addition of more than half a billion dollars in deposits resulted in Crittenden County moving to No. 10 in total deposits.

The FDIC’s summary of deposits is the only official report that provides Arkansas-specific trend data for banks that operate in multiple states, and it can be a good indicator of the retail banking sector in a given market. It is not an indicator of profitability. 

As of June 30, 114 banks were doing business in Arkansas, including newcomer JPMorgan Chase Bank of Columbus, Ohio, which opened four offices in Little Rock and one in North Little Rock between July 2021 and May. Chase is the largest bank in the country by assets ($3.38 trillion) and deposits ($2.55 trillion), but its Arkansas deposits of $66.1 million barely cracked the state’s top 100.

Despite Chase’s arrival, the total number of bank branches in the state shrank by eight to 1,286.

Click here to see a table of growth in the Arkansas bank deposit market.

(Correction, Sept. 27: A typo has been corrected in Simmons Bank’s deposit total.)