Florida banks stay safe

Commercial real estate is the bread and butter of many Florida banks, which is why so many of them failed during the recession when real estate tanked.

But it appears that Florida banks are staying away from high concentrations in commercial real estate, at least for now. Not a single Florida bank shows up on a list of banks nationwide with high concentrations of commercial real estate and construction loans.

That suggests that Florida bankers are being careful about keeping their portfolios balanced with a mix of loans. No banker in the state wants to be saddled with an excessive number of commercial real estate loans in another downturn.

Analysts at SNL Financial recently compiled a list of the banks that exceed the thresholds of high concentration of commercial real estate loans. They used banking regulators' two criteria: The first was construction and development loan concentration above 100%. The second was commercial real estate concentration above 300% with a 50% or more increase in total commercial real estate balances over the preceding 36 months.

By this screen, SNL identified 33 banks, many of them small financial institutions in states such as Texas and Tennessee. Little Rock, Ark.-based Bank of the Ozarks was the largest bank by total assets among the 33 institutions that exceeded both criteria. Bank of the Ozarks, which has branches in the Sarasota-Bradenton area, grew commercial real state loans by 96.49% over the last 36 months.