Arkansas bank deposits grew at a 7.5 percent clip in the year that ended June 30, handily beating the national growth rate and topping $60 billion for the first time as the number of separate bank charters and branch locations continued to decline.
More than $2 billion of the state's $4.28 billion in additional deposits flowed to Bank of the Ozarks, the fast-growing publicly traded bank headquartered in Little Rock. With Arkansas deposits of $5.42 billion, up 61 percent from $3.37 billion in mid-2015, Bank of the Ozarks moved from No. 7 last year to No. 2, passing Bank of America, Regions Bank, First Security Bank, Simmons Bank and Centennial Bank.
Arvest Bank still had the most Arkansas deposits as of June 30, $7.67 billion, but Bank of the Ozarks overtook Arvest as the largest bank chartered in Arkansas ranked by total assets when it completed two acquisitions in July.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released its annual summary of deposits Friday. It is an accounting taken at midyear by the government agency that insures bank deposits. It is not a holistic report card on the health of a bank or of the banking industry, but it is the only official report that provides Arkansas-specific trend data for multistate banks like Arvest, Regions and Bank of America.
BOZ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday morning. Its June 30 call report filed with the FDIC showed that its brokered deposits — bundled deposits that banks seek out to supplement "core" customer deposits in order to fund loan demand — had tripled from $501 million to $1.5 billion in 12 months.
Last year, when the summary of deposits showed a 22 percent growth in Arkansas deposits from mid-2014 to mid-2015, BOZ's chief operating officer, Tyler Vance, credited winning bids on public deposits from state agencies and municipalities across the state.
Below is a list of the 20 banks with the most in-state deposits. In-state mergers brought two of them into the top 20: Farmers & Merchants Bank of Stuttgart, which acquired Bank of Fayetteville in November, and Citizens Bank of Batesville, which acquired Parkway Bank of Rogers in December.
Those acquisitions explain why the total number of banks doing business in the state as of June 30, 127, was down by two from a year earlier. The number of separate bank branch locations, 1,354, was down by 11 from mid-2015. The number of branches has declined by 10 percent from the peak in mid-2008.
Top 20 Banks in Arkansas by Deposit
| Institution Name | HQ State |
No. of Branches | 2016 Deposits† | Change in Deposits (2015-16) | Market Share (June 2016) |
Change in Market Share (2015-16) | |
| 1 | Arvest Bank | AR | 117 | $7,674,575 | 7.21% | 12.63% | -0.32% |
| 2 | Bank of the Ozarks | AR | 81 | $5,417,588 | 60.96% | 8.91% | 49.50% |
| 3 | Bank of America | NC | 23 | $4,193,480 | 4.23% | 6.90% | -3.09% |
| 4 | Regions Bank | AL | 95 | $4,127,862 | 7.32% | 6.79% | -0.29% |
| 5 | Centennial Bank | AR | 80 | $3,819,469 | 10.61% | 6.28% | 2.78% |
| 6 | Simmons Bank | AR | 85 | $3,697,837 | 4.68% | 6.08% | -2.72% |
| 7 | First Security Bank | AR | 77 | $3,616,454 | -0.05% | 5.95% | -7.03% |
| 8 | BancorpSouth Bank | MS | 46 | $1,637,464 | 0.02% | 2.69% | -7.24% |
| 9 | Bear State Bank | AR | 35 | $1,226,888 | 6.32% | 2.02% | -0.98% |
| 10 | IberiaBank | LA | 23 | $1,162,085 | -6.78% | 1.91% | -13.57% |
| 11 | First National Bank of Fort Smith | AR | 18 | $976,082 | 3.80% | 1.61% | -3.01% |
| 12 | U.S. Bank | OH | 42 | $949,167 | 0.63% | 1.56% | -6.59% |
| 13 | Farmers Bank & Trust (Magnolia) | AR | 20 | $936,693 | 3.53% | 1.54% | -3.75% |
| 14 | First National Bank (Paragould) | AR | 14 | $863,680 | 15.22% | 1.42% | 6.77% |
| 15 | Farmers & Merchants Bank (Stuttgart)* | AR | 19 | $811,880 | 2.78% | 1.34% | -4.29% |
| 16 | First Community Bank (Batesville) | AR | 13 | $789,037 | 14.23% | 1.30% | 6.56% |
| 17 | Southern Bancorp Bank | AR | 24 | $763,909 | 0.11% | 1.26% | -6.67% |
| 18 | Wells Fargo Bank | SD | 3 | $615,417 | 2.48% | 1.01% | -4.72% |
| 19 | Citizens Bank (Batesville)** | AR | 18 | $569,168 | 5.55% | 0.94% | -1.05% |
| 20 | Chambers Bank | AR | 18 | $552,788 | -4.46% | 0.91% | -10.78% |
*Acquired Bank of Fayetteville on Nov. 30, 2015; 2015 deposits have been combined for comparison
**Acquired Parkway Bank of Rogers on Dec. 22, 2015; 2015 deposits have been combined for comparison
†Dollars in thousands