Banking closure rate slows down

Good news for nervous Gulf Coast bankers: The frenzy of bank failures nationwide could be subsiding.

There have been five Florida bank failures in 2011, none of which were Gulf Coast-based banks. That compares well to the first five months of 2010, when 12 Florida banks were shuttered, including four on the Gulf Coast. Another bank that failed in early 2010 was Fort Piece-based Riverside National Bank of Florida, which had a large presence in Cape Coral.

The bank failure slowdown is happening nationwide, too, according to a new report released by Trepp LLC, a New York City-based data research firm. That report states that May, with five, was the second slowest month for failures since early 2009. Only three banks were shuttered in March.

April, with 13 failures, seems to have been an anomaly, according to the report.

The month with the most bank closures since the onset of the recession is July 2009, with 24 failures, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Only one institution in Florida, Jupiter-based Integrity Bank, was seized in July 2009.