About the New York Bank Ratings Index

New York State is one of the financial capitals of the world, and individual consumers of banking services have a wide range of commercial banks to choose from, all of which provide a dizzying array of products and services. With the details of many of these products and services buried in the fine print of consumer agreements or in the back pages of bank websites, the consumer is sometimes at a loss when choosing which bank to use as his or her primary bank when looking to open a checking account, use an ATM, send a remittance, or open a credit card account.

The New York Bank Ratings Index (NYBRI) attempts to take some of the guesswork out of choosing a bank. It evaluates the nineteen largest banks in New York State along twenty consumer-focused categories and awards points under each category based on how well the banks meet consumer need in each particular category. The index then ranks the banks by giving a cumulative score under each category and lists them out highest to lowest.

Accompanying this site is a report that provides background information on the NYBRI, explains the process by which we completed the ranking and scoring for the nineteen largest banks serving individual bank customers in New York State, scores the banks and offers the final ranking, and then supplies the individualized data for each bank in an appendix to that report.

• View our Sources and Methodology
• Read the New York Bank Ratings Index Report

Consumers can also use this site to create a customized index and ranking based on their own preferences in terms of the categories to use in scoring the banks and the relative weights to assign these categories.

As a complement to the report and our ranking, this site offers New Yorkers the opportunity to review the products and services of the nineteen largest banks servicing individual consumers throughout the state. Individuals can also customize this bank ranking index to reflect their own interests by selecting the categories they would like to include in their own index and then weighting those categories in accordance with their relative importance to the individual. The first thing for the customer to do is select the categories that he or she wants to include in the customized ranking. Next, apply a percentage weight (out of 100) to give to each category. Finally, apply the categories and their weights to the final score to generate a ranking of the nineteen banks based on the customer’s own ranking index. Through this process, consumers can generate their own, customized ranking that reflects the products and services that are the most important to them.

We used the following categories when creating our bank rating system:

• Number of Branch Locations
• Branch Locations: Distribution
• Online Banking
• Fee for Outside ATMS
• Checking Account Fees (basic level or checkless checking account)
• Savings Account Fees (basic level account)
• Overdraft Practices
• Overdraft Charges and Limits
• Credit Cards (basic secured, as compared to APR range)
• Credit Card Fees
• Acceptance of Alternative Forms of Identification
• Cost of Wire Transfers
• Loan Origination Market Share (Percentage of Total Lending Volume in New York State)
• Loan Acceptance Rate in New York State
• Loan Acceptance Rate, Latino Borrowers
• Loan Acceptance Rate, Black Borrowers
• Loan Acceptance Rate, Low- and Moderate-Income Borrowers
• Percentage of Loans Made to Low- and Moderate-Income Borrowers
• Acceptance Rate, Low- and Moderate-Income Communities
• Percentage of Loans Made to Communities of Color

For a complete description of each of these categories, please read the NYBRI Report.