Bankers Trust Company

THE INSTITUTION'S SCORE

Capital Score

Capital is an essential measurement of an institution's financial strength. It acts as a bulwark against losses and provides protection for accountholders when a bank is experiencing financial instability. From a safety and soundness perspective, more capital is preferred.

Bankers Trust Company received a score of 8 out of a possible 30 points on our test to measure the adequacy of a bank's capital, coming in below the national average of 13.13.

One way to measure this buffer is looking at a bank's Tier 1 capital ratio. Bankers Trust Company's Tier 1 capital ratio was 8.72 percent, higher than the 6 percent level considered adequate by regulators, but under the national average of 25.65 percent. A higher capital ratio suggests the bank will be better able to weather economic challenges.

Overall, Bankers Trust Company held equity amounting to 8.59 percent of its assets, which was lower than the national average of 12.03 percent.

Asset Quality Score

This test's purpose is to try to understand how the bank's reserves set aside to cover loan losses, as well as overall capitalization, could be affected by troubled assets, such as past-due loans.

Having a large number of these types of assets may eventually require a bank to use capital to absorb losses, decreasing its buffer of equity. It also means that there are likely to be many assets that are in non-accrual status and thus aren't earning interest for the bank, resulting in diminished earnings and potentially more risk of a future failure.

Bankers Trust Company scored 40 out of a possible 40 points on Bankrate's asset quality test, above the national average of 37.49.

A widely used indicator of asset quality is the percentage of problem assets a bank holds compared to its total assets. As of December 31, 2017, 0.34 percent of Bankers Trust Company's loans were noncurrent, meaning they were more than 90 days past due or were in non-accrual status. That's below the national average of 1.01 percent.

Banks keep a reserve to handle problem assets known as an "allowance for loan and lease losses." Comparing the size of that reserve to the total amount of problematic loans can be a widely used indicator when evaluating a bank's ability to manage problem assets. Unfortunately, the FDIC did not provide information on Bankers Trust Company's loan loss allowance in its most recent filings.

Earnings score

A bank's ability to earn money affects its safety and soundness. A bank can retain its earnings, giving a boost to its capital buffer, or put them to work addressing problematic loans, potentially making the bank more resilient in times of trouble. Conversely, losses take away from a bank's ability to do those things.

Bankers Trust Company scored 20 out of a possible 30 on Bankrate's test of earnings, exceeding the national average of 15.12.

Return on equity, calculated by dividing net income (profit, essentially) by total equity, is one key measure of a bank's earnings. Bankers Trust Company's most recent annualized quarterly return on equity was 10.51 percent, above the national average of 8.10 percent.

For the twelve months ended December 31, 2017, the bank recorded net income of $39.3 million on total equity of $384.2 million. The bank experienced an annualized return on average assets, or ROA, of 0.92 percent, below the 1 percent deemed satisfactory in accordance with industry standards and below the average for U.S. banks of 1.00 percent.