By Debby Woodin

dwoodin@joplinglobe.com

Wall Street is a long way from Main Street when it comes to the financial turmoil that sent markets tumbling this week, area bankers say.

“Most small-towns banks are probably the safest places in the nation to have your money,” says Alden Buerge, chairman and CEO of First State Bank of Joplin.

“Investment banks like Bear Stearns are a totally different animal than a First State Bank. They’re balance-sheet structure is completely different. We’re FDIC insured and they’re not,” Buerge said.

There are ways depositors can check on the strength of the institution where they have their money.

One is by using an online service such as www.Bankrate.com. It rates banks and credit unions from a high of five stars to a low of one star based on a number of factors. It is supported by advertising, bankers point out, and is not a government site.

First State Bank earned a four-star rating on that service. Commerce Bank got five stars. Mid-Missouri Bank, however, received only one star.

Fred Osborn, president of Commerce Bank of Joplin, and P. Lee Gilbert, president and CEO of Mid-Missouri Bancshares of Springfield, which owns the Joplin branches of Mid-Missouri Bank, were unavailable Friday to comment.

Buerge said First State is proud of its four-star rating, though he says consumers should not rely on those types of ratings solely to make decisions on where to keep their money.

“All of those rating systems are somewhat superficial and don’t take into consideration an individual bank’s ability to raise capital or to sell assets,” Buerge said. He recommends a government rating system kept by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council called uniform bank reports performance. Those can be found online at www.ffiec.gov/UBPR.htm.

John Lee, president and CEO of First Independent Bank at Aurora, which earned a rating of two stars on Bankrate.com, said such ratings are not as reliable an indicator of the soundness of a bank as a federal bank auditor’s report.

“They are not a regulatory rating. They’re not privy to all the information that a bank auditor has. They might downgrade a bank with more than average nonperfomring loans. But what they don’t know is how well the loans are secured,” Lee said.

For instance, a loan secured with real estate might repay better than a loan secured by office furnishings or equipment. The collateral is not reflected in the Web site reports, Lee said. Also, the figures on which the independent reports are based might be old.

“Our earnings have actually gone up and we had a few non-performing assets that have been sold,” since the Bankrate.com’s rating for Lee’s bank was produced off June 30 figures, he said.

The Missouri Bankers’ Association reported this week in a news release to banks that Web site ratings systems are not official, as are FDIC reports, though FDIC reports are not public record.

“The FDIC has good reason not to publish their ratings,” the news release reads. “Banks with problems often work them out over time. On average, the vast majority of banks on the FDIC problem list come back to healthy standing over time.”

The FDIC, however, lists several bank ranking services for the public to use, including Bankrate.com. And some bankers say they use the information supplied by sites like Bankrate.com themselves.

Edward DiMaria, senior vice present and chief financial officer for Bankrate.com, responded by noting it is a 30-year-old research organization that initially supplied information to the banking industry but evolved into a consumer site. Its information today is used by many inside and outside the industry, including The Wall Street Journal, he said.

“It’s a very good source for people,” he said, adding that IndyMac, the bank that federal regulators closed this summer, received the lowest rating available from Bankrate.com.

“By the way, they were an advertiser,” DiMaria noted.

Lee said one of the best ways to evaluate a bank’s security is to know the bank and to verify independently that it is FDIC insured. That can be done on the Internet at www.fdic.gov.

Lee and Buerge also emphasized that the FDIC insures depositors’ money so that losses like those threatening investments don’t happen. The FDIC insures individual depositors for up to $100,000 per bank and up to $250,000 for retirement accounts.

“A lot of the big failures that have been on Wall Street have been investment firms,” Lee said. “A lot of the media is calling them banks but they’re not. They’re not community banks. ... There are some banks that are struggling, but community banks as a whole is a strong industry. They’ve got good capital, good liquidity. Banks as a whole are getting a bad rap right now.”



On the street

“There’s a huge difference between what’s been going on on Wall Street and Main Street Joplin.”

— Alden Buerge, president and CEO of First State Bank of Joplin, 802 S. Main St.