Professional IRA Bank Monitor For Regulators, Program Compliance Officers, Insurers and M&A Analysis Users
Includes IRA's "Shadow" CAMELS, Multi-Period Reports, Advanced Scenario Stress Analytics, Raw Data Downloads for FDIC, Fed & NCUA, IRA's BankWire and Analyst articles. Learn More
IRABankRatings.com Unlimited-Use Subscription For Corporate Treasurers, Bankers and Credit Union Operators, Industry Vendors, Portfolio Managers
Designed for monitoring investment and counterparty portfolios to support risk monitoring and allocation processes. Covers all U.S. banks and credit unions. Used by community bankers for marketing and to monitor competitors. Learn More
IRABankRatings.com Shopping Cart For Individual Depositors, Registered Investment Advisors
Know the current risk and stress condition of your bank or credit union. Purchase individual reports using an internet shopping cart. See the same reports a corporate users. Learn More
IRA Banking Industry Fact Sheet
Quickly get an overview of the banking industry. See the trends in industry health over time. What proportion of the industry is stressed? What service segments of the industry are improving and which remain stagnant? This is a popular page to check right after the FDIC releases their quarterly findings.
"Move Your Money"
One of the most important tools we have assembled for empowering people to alter their relationship to banking in America. IRA proudly contributes this FREE tool for public education purposes as part of our commitment to social responsibility.
Failed Bank Forensics
See the tale of the tape on evey bank that has failed since January 2008. IRA has a 97% accuracy record at indicating risk of bank failure.
IRA SEC Filings Catalog There are over 40,000 SEC Registrants that submit financial filings. This tool is designed to steamline getting to all of them. Requires a registered account ID (it activates a cookie) to use the full features.
IRA's bank analytics detected 97% of all bank failures since the beginning of 2008, more accurate than any other ratings organization. Our policy observations are ubiquitous media commentary about banking and finance.
In the end it's not about what we say, it's what our customers say we do for them.
The Merchants National Bank of Sacramento
Stephen A. Meyers, President/CEO
(A California Community Bank, Member of Merchants Holding Company)
We receive a number of bank analytic reports, but the IRA stands out for me. Whether analyzing correspondent banks or the local competition, IRA has proven to be a reliable and solid resource.
Southern California Edison
Robin Drummond, Manager of Cash Management
(2011 Fortune 500 rank: 198)
We use our IRA Unlimited Subscription to keep an eye on our minority banks. If any of them are downgraded from one quarter to the next, we call our Credit Dept to do more investigation. I use it as a distant early warning.
We like the IRA service. For the price, it?s a reasonable tool to have.
Valley National Bank
Wayne, New Jersey
Stephen P. Davey, Senior Vice President, Director of Risk Management
State of New Jersey legislation called the Governmental Unit Deposit Protection Act (GUDPA) http://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_banking/depositories/gudpa.htm acts as a supplemental insurance program on the deposits of municipalities and local government agencies. The program is administered by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance and requires banks tht accept municipal deposits to cover losses of non-FDIC insured deposits in other banks should they fail. Exposure is pro rata to a bank's market share. So if a bank's muni deposit market share was 10% and another bank that accepted municipal deposits failed, the first bank would have to reimburse 10% of the lost uninsured deposits.
We use our IRA Unlimited Subscription to monitor the other New Jersey banks that participate in muni deposit market and estimate our exposure. We use the intelligence to anticipate a response to the trends we may see. The list of GUDPA banks is public at http://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_banking/depositories/gudpa/gudpacertlist.htm.
We like the IRA service for several reasons - - an executive is available at IRA to answer our questions, the thorough Glossary section explains what is behind the numbers in the bank ratings.
Service Master
David Newsom, Credit Risk Director
(2011 Fortune 1000 rank: 598)
Has used IRA to examine all their counter party risks, and relationships with local banks, another form of counterparty risk.
We set up a binder, with a tab for each bank, and printed out the report on each. We will update periodically (quarterly for existing relationships, and add new ones in as additional relationships are contemplated.) This makes it handy to show other management and staff at a glance how a bank is doing, without having to log on or give them a password.
Allows me to look at each bank, gain a better understanding and insight than I might not have otherwise. I have Bloomberg and other sources, but IRA drills down deeper. It gives us a sense of what the bank examiners are looking at. The information is pretty detailed and fairly through. I am still getting used to it. I am not getting this kind of information anywhere else. CAMEL ratings, capital adequacy rating, and risk analysis grades. It allows me to do a bit better, have a more through knowledge of relationships and potential partners. It is helpful tool, and I am continuing to use it. I can see it is a valuable tool in my arsenal of tools I use to evaluate banks. I can log on anytime and see how a bank is doing. I combine it with other pieces of information.
How has it helped your business?
1.) I have a great sense of comfort we are in good condition.
2.) However, at the local level, there are two banks that are in worse shape than I thought, so we are paying them greater attention.
3.) Validates my decision to not do business with Regents Bank.
4.) We look at banks where we have investment holdings.
5.) We look at vendor and supplier relationships and do counter part risk analysis on
them. For example, for companies we do fuel price swaps with we want to know
the health of the banks they deal with.
We will be using it to expand our Credit Dept capabilities; we will be lending to franchisees, evaluating lenders to our franchisees, and looking at corporate credit. We are building a comprehensive Credit Dept of people who know how to lend, analyze financial statements and other forms of credit risk, and so knowing how to read and use the IRA bank reports will be part of that. I want to create a process, with one analyst assigned to update the book, so I have control of who access the information, so I know staff is using for company purposes only.
Treasury and rest of Treasury teams, and Cash Management team will use it, to be aware of issues with banks they otherwise would not be aware of.
IRA gives us an information source that is not temporal, but a concrete picture of what a bank is actually doing. A bank is like a tree, which can look great from a distance but once you get under it, you might see some rot.
I like that IRA checks back with me that the product is working for us.
We are very adept at credit rating of our customers, but banks are a different beast, requires definite expertise. Using IRA gives us expertise for a nominal cost.
Uses IRA bank ratings in several ways,
1.) Quarterly, looks at all banks they do business with or have a line of credit with, Gives a recommendation to the Treasury folks who write the 10K. Information gets applied, but IRA is not specifically mentioned yet.
2.) Setting up a new credit revolver of $1B with 25 banks, we use IRA ratings to look and assure they are of investment grade, so we can know the risk before we set it up, using a spreadsheet.
3.) Securities contracts between us and the banks regarding swaps and derivatives. Looks at IRA ratings and uses to recommend threshold amounts and justify demands for increased collateral with the ISDA.
4.) Credit Department - main function is to set credit limit for customers, like Wal-Mart. If customer not worthy we will require collateral, usually a Letter of Credit, from customer?s bank. So we can now look at the risk of that bank, how likely it is they can perform, and not be surprised by a bank folding. LoCs are not FDIC insured.
5.) Entire Corporation - if any one needs bank analysis, they contact me. We do business internally; have deposits with banks throughout the world. On a Semi annul basis we want a quick analysis. Now we have some view in, as IRA covers the American divisions of foreign banks.
I like that an executive at IRA was available to answer my questions.
Con-Way Inc.
Sharla Kim, Treasury Cash Manager
(2011 Fortune 500 rank: 470)
We will be starting to use the product next week in our yearly bank rating review. I'll let you know if we have questions then. Thanks for following up.
Air Gas
Joe Sullivan, Treasurer
(2011 Fortune 500 rank: 474)
I like it. It fills a gap between the other published ratings and CDSs. IRA provides another data point as to bank quality. It is very in depth stuff, and does require a learning curve, but not expensive.
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