Community banks can be defined as those owned by organizations with less than $1 billion in assets. Based on this definition, community banks accounted for 55 percent of all banking offices in the district in mid-2005 and 40 percent of all deposits. These shares were down considerably from twenty years ago due to substantial consolidation in the district banking industry. However, community banks remain much more important in the district than the nation, where they accounted for only 32 percent of banking offices and 18 percent of deposits in mid-2005. The greater importance of community banks in the district is due partly to the higher share of population in non-metropolitan areas, where community banks have traditionally focused. It also reflects the fact that intrastate branching was severely restricted in the region until relatively recently, artificially limiting the size of banks.

Although some district states were slow to embrace interstate banking, the district as a whole has largely caught up with the nation. Among the giant, nationwide banking organizations that now have a significant presence in the region are Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and US Bank. Most district states still contain one or more large banking organizations that do most of their business in their home state (e.g., FirstBank in Colorado, Intrust in Kansas, Commerce and UMB in Missouri, First National in Nebraska, and BOK in Oklahoma). However, such organizations account for a much smaller share of district banking activity than they did twenty years ago.