BankingLENS

State benchmarks · Q2 2026

Illinois bank benchmarks, Q2 2026

Data from FFIEC call reports for the quarter ending June 30, 2026. Published September 20, 2026.

Short version: 325 banks are headquartered in Illinois, holding $774.18 billion in total assets between them as of June 30, 2026. The median one holds $278M. The median Illinois bank earned 1.15% on its assets against 1.23% for the median US bank, on a margin of 3.67% against 3.83%.

How many banks are headquartered in Illinois?

325 banks filed an FFIEC call report for the quarter ending June 30, 2026 with a head office in Illinois. Between them they reported $774.18 billion in total assets. That is a count of charters headquartered there, which is not the same as a count of banks operating there: a bank chartered in a neighboring state with branches across this one is counted in the state its head office sits in, and its whole balance sheet goes with it.

Non-insured non-deposit trust companies are left out of every figure on this page. They hold a charter and file a report, but they take no deposits and make no loans, so a funding cost or a margin computed for one of them is a ratio over an empty denominator. The same exclusion is applied to the national medians, so the two columns below are measured on the same basis.

Illinois bank benchmarks against the national median

Each figure is the median across banks headquartered in Illinois, beside the median across every bank in the country that filed for the same quarter. The gap is in percentage points.

Metric Illinois US median Gap  
Return on assetsNet income as a share of average assets. The summary number. 1.15% 1.23% −0.08 pp In line
Net interest marginNet interest income over average earning assets: the spread business. 3.67% 3.83% −0.16 pp Worse than the US median
Efficiency ratioNoninterest expense per dollar of revenue. Lower is leaner. 63.04% 61.81% +1.23 pp In line
Cost of fundsInterest expense over interest-bearing liabilities: what the money costs. 2.07% 2.34% −0.27 pp Better than the US median
Loans to depositsHow much of the deposit base is lent out rather than held in securities. 74.54% 80.16% −5.62 pp Lower
Tier 1 leverage ratioTier 1 capital over average assets, with no risk weights applied. 10.93% 10.96% −0.03 pp In line

Source: FFIEC call reports for the quarter ending June 30, 2026. Illinois medians are computed across all 325 banks headquartered there, at every size. National medians are computed across every filing bank, matching the figures published in the BankingLens benchmark articles for the same quarter.

What the numbers say

The median bank in Illinois pays 27 basis points less for its money than the median US bank, 2.07% against 2.34%, and earns 16 basis points less on the spread, 3.67% against 3.83%. Cheap funding that does not turn into margin points at the asset side rather than deposit pricing - a securities-heavy balance sheet, or a loan book at lower yields than the national mix.

On the expense side it runs an efficiency ratio of 63.04, level with the national 61.81, with return on assets at 1.15%, level with the country.

The median Illinois bank lends out 74.54% of its deposits against 80.16% nationally, so more of what it takes in sits in securities rather than loans, and carries tier 1 leverage capital of 10.93%, level with the country. Neither of those has a good direction on its own. A high loan-to-deposit ratio means a bank is putting its funding to work, and also that it has less room left before it has to buy more; capital beyond what a bank needs to absorb its own losses earns very little.

Banking in Illinois is concentrated. The largest charter headquartered there, BMO Bank of Chicago, IL, holds 32.9% of the state's bank assets, and the five largest hold 68.2% between them. The median bank holds $278M.

The largest banks headquartered in Illinois

The 10 largest by total assets, of 325. 10 of them have a page here carrying the rest of the call report picture.

# Bank City Assets ROA NIM
1 BMO Bank Chicago $255.0B 0.15% 3.24%
2 The Northern Trust Company Chicago $178.6B 1.46% 1.63%
3 CIBC Bank USA Chicago $66.5B 1.51% 3.12%
4 Busey Bank Champaign $18.1B 1.33% 3.74%
5 Byline Bank Chicago $9.9B 1.69% 4.49%
6 Wintrust Bank Chicago $9.6B 1.96% 3.83%
7 Lake Forest Bank & Trust Company Lake Forest $9.3B 1.97% 3.31%
8 First Mid Bank & Trust Mattoon $9.1B 1.19% 3.90%
9 First American Bank Elk Grove Village $8.6B 1.51% 3.49%
10 Old Second National Bank Aurora $6.9B 1.68% 5.19%

Methodology

Related reading

A state is a market. A peer group is a comparison.

The medians above tell you what Illinois looks like. They do not tell you whether your bank is good for its size and charter, which is the question an examiner and a board actually ask. Bank Peer Intel puts every one of these figures against the FFIEC peer group your bank is measured in - percentile rank on each metric, fourteen quarters of trend, and the flags an examiner reaches for first.

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