Alaska's state-chartered and federally chartered banks.

• Author: Miller, Amy
• Position: ALASKA TRENDS

Alaska is home to four state-chartered banks--Denali State Bank, First Bank, Mt. McKinley Bank, and Northrim Bank--and three federally chartered banks--First National Bank Alaska, KeyBank, and Wells Fargo Bank. What's the difference between state and federally chartered banks? The short answer is that the charter holder is the supervisor of the bank. In Alaska, state-chartered banks are supervised by the State of Alaska, while the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (part of the US Treasury Department) supervises federally chartered banks. Bank founders choose between state and federal charters at start up.

Alaska only has one federally chartered bank that is headquartered in Alaska--First National Bank Alaska. The other two federally chartered banks that operate in Alaska, Wells Fargo and KeyBank, do not produce Alaska-specific balance sheet information. In an effort to make the banking data included in the Alaska Trends section of Alaska Business Monthly (page 169) more accurate, starting this month, figures will include the financial results of state-chartered Alaska banks as well as the one federally chartered Alaska bank for which data is available on the state level, First National Bank Alaska.

It is easy to see the relative size of state-chartered banks as compared to federally chartered banks in Alaska. All of Alaska's state-chartered banks combined reported $2,294,350,000 in total assets and $2,011,970,000 in total liabilities during the third quarter of...