August 21st, 2014
Brad Rollins’ Blog: Following the money in Central Texas banks

INTERACTIVE: MercuryPro members can explore the full-size — and more detailed — version of this map. Click here.

SHOP TALK by BRAD ROLLINS

You don’t have to squint too hard these days to see the fortunes, large and small, being made in Central Texas’ booming business environment.

The physical evidence, of course, is hard to miss: Hundreds of millions of dollars of development and construction taking place any given day in cities up and down the Interstate 35 corridor. To truly take the measure of our runaway prosperity, however, you could do worse than to case some banks. That is, after all, where people keep their money when it isn’t on the job.

In the last decade, Central Texas individuals and organizations, on the whole, have been piling up fat stacks of cash:

As of mid-2013, Hays County banks reported nearly $1.36 billion in combined deposits. Five years ago, that number was $791.57 million; in 2003, it was $567.31 million. The amount of money “sitting” in Hays County banks, in other words, has doubled in the last decade, an upswing considerably greater than the more tangible population growth we talk about all the time.

Banks in four Interstate 35 corridor counties — Hays, Caldwell, Guadalupe and Comal — report about $4.04 billion in deposits. To put that in perspective, financial institutions in these four continues have deposits amounting to just under 40 percent of those in the entire oil-rich state of Alaska ($10.13 billion).

Banks in counties that fall within the Austin or San Antonio metropolitan statistical areas maintained deposits of $112.68 billion as of mid-2013. That is comparable to all the money in all the banks in Washington state ($117.78 billion), headquarters for corporate giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Costco and Nordstrom.

In fact, banks in the 13 counties that fall in Austin-San Antonio’s orbit reported more in deposits than all the banks in more than half of U.S. states. Total bank deposits in Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and North Dakota — all six states combined — are still about $14 billion less than funds deposited in Central Texas banks in June 2013, the last annual snapshot available at the moment. (Deposit totals and market shares for the year that ended June 30, 2014 are scheduled to be released Oct. 2 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.)

As part of the San Marcos Mercury’s continuing commitment to provide a wealth of resources for MercuryPro members, this morning we launched the Central Texas Bank Database. There’s a lot of money floating around these parts and we’ve started assembling the tools you need to understand the region’s banking and finance industry.

Brick by brick, the San Marcos Mercury is building a one-stop shop for information that people need — either to know what’s happening or to know how to make things happen.

Last month, we re-launched our Central Texas Development Map and introduced our Central Texas New Construction Map. We’re busy gathering data to supplement both of these and keep them current. Our Central Texas New Auto Sales Database is already the most comprehensive collection of proprietary retail vehicle sales figures available to the general public and it, too, is about to be updated to reflect year-to-date sales in a seven-county area surrounding Austin.

MercuryPro membership does have its advantages, but we don’t run an exclusive club here. You can, in fact, join this very minute and I’d like to invite you to do just that.

For MercuryPro members only

Explore the Central Texas Bank Database + download reports in paginated or spreadsheet format. Join MercuryPro today. Click here. Already a member? Log-in here.

CORRECTION 5:26 p.m. THURSDAY, AUG. 21: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story briefly said “trillions” of dollars in more than one instance where it should have said “billions” of dollars.

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