Although New England is home to one of the nation's largest banking organizations, the region is dominated, in terms of number of institutions, by small community banks. At the national level, this includes 48 banks that are exclusively credit card lenders. These credit card lenders, none of which are located in New England, hold 52 percent of the credit card loans of community banks nationwide, while accounting for less than 1 percent of the assets.
Some performance measures change significantly when credit card lenders are included.
For this reason, we show two national series, including and excluding the credit card lenders. In contrast, at the national level, commercial banks dominate the community bank group, accounting for 89 percent of community bank assets nationwide. Over the past two years, New England's community banks have reported consistent earnings. On a quarterly basis, return on average assets has remained within a narrow range of 98 to 110 basis points. Their profitability lags that of community banks nationwide, as Exhibit 1 shows.