Sources for NYBRI
To conduct the 2024 version of the New York Bank Rating Index (NYBRI), we created a range of categories that we believed were most important to consumers when choosing a bank to open a checking account, maintain a credit card, take out a home mortgage loan, or engage in check cashing. The primary sources of information for the index were the banks’ own websites and marketing materials and, to a lesser extent, interviews with bank representatives where particular pieces of information were not readily available through public sources. In addition, for the information about bank branches and their locations, we relied on information from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), which obtained this data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). With a small number of banks, information about bank branches and their locations came directly from the banks through our correspondence with them for this study. For information about bank lending activity, we relied on publicly available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) information. We relied on data from 2022, the last year for which such data was available when the study was performed.
After the information was compiled for each bank, the banks were contacted and asked to correct any of the information we had gathered. Most banks either did not respond or had no corrections to make. Some banks suggested minor corrections. Where banks gave us such information, we largely accepted it and made it a part of the index. In instances where we did not agree with the information the banks provided us, we noted that in footnotes in their individual bank scorecard.
With a goal of having a scoring range that had as its highest score a possible score of 100 for each bank, we created twenty categories of scoring and the banks each received a possible high score of five points within each of the twenty categories. For more information on scoring in each category, and each bank’s individual scores within them, consult the accompanying NYBRI Report. In addition, we have created some data visualization tables for some of the HMDA bank data which can be accessed through our Tableau Public profile.
NYBRI Methodology
The methodology for the 2024 version of the New York Bank Ratings Index (NYBRI) includes two types of scoring: that which is based on specific, objective metrics; and those that are relative, where we compare different banks against each other to group them in different quintiles among the field of the twenty-eight banks and eight financial technology ("fintech") companies that we scored using our analysis. The following links provide information on the specific categories and the methodologies we used in “scoring” each bank or fintech platform.