The 50 US banks with the highest tier 1 leverage ratio, Q2 2026

What you are looking at

The tier 1 leverage ratio is tier 1 capital over average total assets. Unlike the risk-based ratios it applies no risk weights at all, so it cannot be improved by shifting the balance sheet into assets a model likes. That bluntness is the point: it is the floor regulators use when the risk weights turn out to be wrong.

Well capitalized is 5%. The community bank leverage ratio framework, which roughly 44% of banks use in place of the risk-based ratios, sets its threshold at 9%. Most banks run somewhere between those two and the low teens.

The ranking is built from the FFIEC call reports filed for the period ending June 30, 2026 - the same data the BankingLens dashboard serves, not a sample. Two screens are applied before anything is sorted. Banks under $500M in total assets are left out, because at that size a single lumpy quarter moves a ratio further than any strategy would and a national list becomes a list of accidents. And a charter has to be in the banking business to be ranked: deposits worth at least a quarter of its assets, or loans worth at least a quarter of its assets. That second screen removes 11 trust and custody charters this quarter, whose ratios are arithmetic rather than performance.

1,793 banks clear both screens and reported a tier 1 leverage ratio this quarter. 24 of the 50 below link to their own page, where the same figures sit beside the rest of the call report.

The 50 banks, ranked

Click a column header to sort. Tier 1 leverage is the headline number; Equity/assets is the unadjusted version of the same idea, which moves with unrealized securities losses where the regulatory ratio usually does not.

Source: FFIEC call report data for the quarter ending June 30, 2026. Universe: US banks with $500M or more in total assets that reported a tier 1 leverage ratio and fund or lend like a bank. Sorted descending.

Leaders by asset size

A single national list on a ratio like this is really a list of business models, and the largest banks and the smallest ones are not competing with each other for anything. These are the leaders inside each asset band, which is the comparison a bank of that size would actually make.

What normal looks like

A ranking only means something against the middle of the distribution. These are the quartiles for tier 1 leverage ratio across every bank that filed for Q2 2026, including the thousands too small to appear above. The median bank reported 11.00%, with the middle half between 9.72% and 13.12%.

Source: BankingLens, computed from FFIEC call reports for the quarter ending June 30, 2026. Quartiles are calculated across the full population of filing banks in each size band, not sampled.

Why the top of the list looks like this

The highest ratios on this list are not the safest banks in the country, and nobody at the top of it is managing for this number. Specialty and captive charters are capitalized by a parent that has no reason to take capital back out, so their ratios sit at multiples of any requirement. A trust or payments charter with almost no lending is in the same position for a different reason.

Among ordinary banks, a high ratio generally means one of three things: a long run of retained earnings with no growth to absorb them, a recent capital raise or conversion, or a deliberate defensive position taken ahead of an acquisition or a credit cycle.

The equity to assets column is the useful comparison. The regulatory ratio excludes most accumulated other comprehensive income, so a bank carrying large unrealized losses on its securities book can show a comfortable tier 1 leverage ratio and a markedly thinner equity ratio. A wide gap between the two columns is worth understanding before reading the first number as strength.

What tier 1 leverage does not tell you

Higher is not automatically better. Capital that is not deployed earns very little, and the most overcapitalized banks on this list also tend to sit well below their peer group on return on equity. Beyond the point where a bank can absorb its own losses, more capital is a cost.

The ratio is also blind to what the assets are. A bank at 9% against conservative, seasoned loans is in a stronger position than a bank at 14% against a concentrated book it grew quickly, and this number will not tell them apart. Concentration and credit metrics do.

Which is why a ranking is a starting point rather than an answer. Every bank above has a page here carrying its full call report picture, and Bank Peer Intel on the dashboard puts each figure against the peer group the bank is actually measured in - percentile rank on every metric, fourteen quarters of trend, and the flags an examiner reaches for first. That is how you tell a structural result from a good quarter.

Methodology

• Universe. Every US bank that filed a call report with the FFIEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2026.
• Size screen. Banks under $500M in total assets are excluded. A ranking of every filer on a raw ratio is topped by institutions small enough for one unusual quarter to move the number more than any decision they made.
• Banking screen. A charter is ranked only if deposits are at least 25% of assets or loans and leases are at least 25% of assets. 11 trust and custody charters over the size floor do neither: they file a call report but hold almost no deposits and make almost no loans, so their ratios are a function of near-empty denominators. Unusual but genuine banks - wholesale lenders, sweep-deposit banks, merchant lenders - clear it.
• Eligible. 1,793 banks cleared both screens and reported a tier 1 leverage ratio for the quarter.
• Tier 1 leverage definition. Tier 1 capital over average total assets for leverage capital purposes, as reported on Schedule RC-R. Banks electing the community bank leverage ratio report the same ratio under that framework.
• Ranking. Sorted by tier 1 leverage ratio descending. Top 50 shown, plus the top 5 inside each asset band.
• Source. FFIEC Central Data Repository, joined to bank identity - name, city, state, RSSD id and FDIC certificate - from the same filing. Figures are as reported by each institution and are not adjusted or restated.
• Reproducibility. This page is generated by _tools/seo/build_ranking_pages.mjs from the published dataset. It is not hand-maintained, and it carries no figure that was typed in.

Related reading

• What is a good tier 1 leverage ratio? - thresholds, the CBLR election, and quartiles by asset band.
• Unrealized losses and AOCI - why the regulatory ratio and the equity ratio can tell different stories.
• CRE concentration limits explained - what the capital is actually being measured against.