The banking turmoil of 2023 arrived in small-town America on Friday night when a tiny four-branch bank in Kansas failed, becoming the fourth lender to be seized by regulators this year and the fifth to fold altogether.
The Heartland Tri-State Bank, of Elkhart, Kan., is the smallest to go under in 2023 by far. It had $139 million in assets when it went down Friday, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The other banks that failed thus far this year all had assets of more than $100 billion, including Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
The biggest was First Republic, which had $229 billion when it was seized by regulators in May, becoming the second-largest bank failure in US history.
The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March were the third- and fourth-biggest ever. Silvergate agreed in March to shut itself down voluntarily.
