Tuesday, July 15, 2008

How to Check if Your Bank is About to Die

This is a very informative site that tells you several ways to tell if you need to pull all of your money above $100,000 out of your bank account or not. This information is quarter by quarter so you might need to check this information after your bank brings out their numbers.

You can look up your bank or credit union at the following links to a) make sure they are insured, and b) check their financial statements and ratio reports, which are a quick snapshot of their performance.
FDIC bank/thrift lookup
NCUA credit union lookup

If you can't locate your financial institution, call them and ask for their FDIC certificate number (bank or savings and loan) or their NCUA charter number (credit union). If they don't have one, you should probably be concerned. (Just ask former customers of the SIBC.)

The easiest way to check your bank's health is to use BankRate.com's Safe & Sound® ratings. They comb through the call report data to rate banks, savings and loans, and credit unions on peer performance, industry standards, and key benchmarks.

Too bad there isn't a bank run monitor system with a Webcam setup in front of your banks headquarters. Also it would be nice to have a Schumer Watch to see if he talks about your bank so you can pull your money out before it gets run on. I guess you can hang out at his site and parse whatever official letters he sends out and immediately go short anything he mentions.

No comments: