Despite some headwinds going into 2024, the U.S. commercial banking industry posted satisfactory earnings, asset quality and capital in 2023, although several indicators were down from their 2022 levels. 

Risk in its various forms and how it is evaluated was the overriding theme of the 2023 Community Banking Research Conference, held last fall at the St. Louis Fed. The annual conference—sponsored by the Federal Reserve System, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)—spotlights emerging research on issues important to the community banking industry and features keynote addresses by leading community bankers and regulators. More than 1,100 academics, bankers and regulators participated in person or virtually.

Maintaining the spread between interest income and interest expense, deposit growth, liquidity, and cybersecurity lead a list of community bankers’ top concerns, according to an annual survey. Several of these concerns spiked from their rankings in the 2022 survey, an indicator of how much the banking environment has changed over the last year.

Take Five is a popular video series featuring St. Louis Fed senior business economist  Kathleen Navin. In each video, Navin provides a quick, concise synopsis of the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).

• 12/20/2024 to 12/20/2024