Broward and Palm Beach Banks Slightly Better Prepared for Apocalypse Than Rest in Florida

When you fill out a deposit slip these days, it's hard to know whether you'll get the money back or if you're throwing it into a bottomless pit. So it should come as an enormous relief that a bank-rating firm, Bauer Financial, has given passing grades to banks and credit...

By Thomas Francis

June 22, 2009

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When you fill out a deposit slip these days, it's hard to know whether you'll get the money back or if you're throwing it into a bottomless pit. So it should come as an enormous relief that a bank-rating firm, Bauer Financial, has given passing grades to banks and credit unions based in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

The ratings are based on reports the banks provide to the federal regulators about their fitness to weather a crisis. The most recently issued report card can be found here, and though it flunked 20 banks in Florida, none was in Broward and only a single one was in Palm Beach County: Integrity Bank, based in Jupiter, which earned zero of a possible five stars.

Another bank in Palm Beach County where depositors have cause for concern is SunAmerica Bank, in Boca Raton. It earned just one star.

In Broward, only one bank is on the ropes. The self-consciously named Security Bank, of North Lauderdale, which also managed a single star.

But that's it. The rest of the banks in the region had two or more stars. Don't get too cocky, though. There are plenty of banks that do business in Broward and Palm Beach that are in deep, deep trouble -- Chicago's Corus Bank, for example, which is currently lugging the twin albatrosses of the Tao Sawgrass in Sunrise, as detailed in this week's New Times feature.

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