Bank deposits grow in bad economy

Add comment October 19th, 2009

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released its annual bank deposit market share data and AMCORE Bank again dominates the Rock River Valley.

AMCORE has been the No. 1 bank locally every year that the FDIC has the information available on the web, which dates back to 1994. In Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago counties, AMCORE had $2.24 billion in deposits at 16 locations. AMCORE commanded 26.7 percent of the market at the end of June.

Even with all of the negative headlines surrounding AMCORE, which has lost money the past 18 months, its local deposits grew by nearly 4 percent.

There is a new No. 2 in the market. Alpine Bank, which now includes Belvidere National Bank deposits, had $824.3 million at the end of June, a 14.7 percent surge. Alpine and Belvidere National Bank were owned by the same bank holding company and executives there decided to merge the two into one bank to market the bank more effectively.

An interesting side note. The total amount of money deposited at area banks grew from $7.99 billion at the end of June in 2008 to $8.38 billion at the end of June in 2009, a 4.9 percent increase and the largest year-over-year jump since 2006 when the economy was in the middle of the housing bubble.