The past couple of years have been wild for bank failures. The beginning of 2023 saw Silicon Valley, Signature, First Republic go under, followed by Heartland Tri-State Bank and Citizen Bank collapse with assets totaling $549 billion. To put that in context, during the financial crisis in 2008, the collapse of 25 banks only added up to $373 billion (in 2008 dollars).
In 2023, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC) stepped in to take over five banks with a combined $549 billion in total assets — the largest year on record since 2000. 2023 is followed by 2008 ($373B), 2009 ($170B), 2011 ($147B) and 2010 ($92B).
Even factoring in inflation, 2023 was the worst year for bank collapses since 2000, beating out 2008’s adjusted $510 billion.
However, 2023 did all this damage with just four banks going under. Comparatively, 2008 saw eight banks collapse, and 2010 saw 157 banks go under — the highest number of bank failures since 2000.
Looking at how bad these bank collapses were on average, the average bank going under in 2023 held $110B billion in assets, compared to the next most of $15 billion in 2008.
With 2023 being the worst year on record, it makes sense that the 2020s are the worst decade on record with banks going under with $556B in total assets beating out the 2000s and the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) where banks collapsed with $553 billion in assets.
However, if we adjust for inflation, the 2000s saw the equivalent of $749 billion wiped out by bank collapses.
While the 2000s may have been the decade with the most assets wiped out in bank collapses, the 2010s actually saw the most collapses at 367, almost twice as much as the 2000s and about 37 times the number of banks that have collapsed since the start to this decade (11).
April saw its first collapse with Philadelphia-based Republic First Bank (doing business as Republic Bank) being shuttered with $6 billion in assets, followed by The First National Bank of Lindsay in October ($107.8 million).
Below is a complete list of all bank failures since 2000.
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