Six U.S. Banks Have Failed in 2026, While New York Fed Capital Gap Under 2008-Style Stress Rises to $16.9 Billion

Six U.S. banks have failed so far in 2026. That is the most since 2017 and one more than in 2023, the year Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic collapsed.

The size of the failures is the difference. David Maya, global risk lead at Accenture, said all six together held about $1.4 billion in assets. Silicon Valley Bank alone had $209 billion. "This is not that," he said.

The 2026 failures

California's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed Nano Banc of Irvine on Sept. 25, citing the lender's deteriorating financial condition, and appointed the FDIC as receiver. Sunwest Bank assumed roughly $605 million of Nano Banc's deposits. The state agency pointed to mismanagement, poor governance and insider trading risks.

About a month earlier, regulators shut Tioga-Franklin Savings Bank in Philadelphia. The others on the 2026 list are Metropolitan Capital Bank & Trust in Chicago, Community Bank and Trust in LaGrange, Georgia, Kentland Federal Savings and Loan Association in Kentland, Indiana, and Small Business Bank in Lenexa, Kansas.

Maya said they share a pattern, just not the 2023 one. "No deposit runs. No rate-driven bond losses. Every one of them was a slow failure — weak management, then losses, then the capital ran out."

The tally is also far below the 507 U.S. bank failures recorded between 2008 and 2014.

What the New York Fed measured

In its annual vulnerability update published today, Nov. 12, New York Fed researchers Matteo Crosignani, Thomas Eisenbach and Fulvia Fringuellotti used data through the second quarter of 2026. Their models estimate how much extra capital banks would need under severe stress to hold Tier 1 common equity at 10 percent of risk-weighted assets.

Under a scenario replicating the 2007-09 financial crisis, the capital gap is $16.9 billion, up from $1.9 billion in the second quarter of 2025.

Under a scenario replicating the 2022 jump in interest rates, with unrealized securities gains and losses fully reflected in capital, the gap is $151.1 billion. That is little changed from $161.3 billion a year earlier.

The authors describe both measures as stable or increasing over the last four quarters and tie the recent shifts to a decline in banks' capital ratios.

The rate-shock number is the one that matters for the 2023 comparison. Even a flat $151.1 billion gap is roughly nine times the 2008-style figure.

Analysts split on how much the failures signal

Most of the experts Global Finance spoke to called the current failures small. Some say the underlying risks have not gone away.

Stephen Curry, founder and chairman of Endurance Advisory, said the problems exposed in 2023 have been only partially fixed. "Uninsured deposits remain concentrated, and losses on held-to-maturity securities are still substantial," he said.

He added that the biggest unresolved issue is supervisory follow-through. Regulators did a good job identifying the problems, he said, but "they still need to be consistent and timely in enforcing regulatory corrections."

The European Banking Authority, by contrast, said banks in the EU and European Economic Area remain resilient, with near-record capital ratios and solid asset quality.

Complaints rise at the CFPB

A separate question is what the federal consumer watchdog is doing with its own caseload. Early in Donald Trump's second term, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dropped lawsuits against 23 financial firms, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Berkshire Hathaway units.

A Guardian analysis of CFPB data found that complaints published in the agency's public database against those defendants rose by more than 75% in the year after the dismissals. Seventeen of the 23 saw increases.

Rocket Mortgage complaints rose more than 130% after the bureau dropped a suit accusing its sibling company, Rocket Homes, of using kickbacks to steer borrowers. The case alleged steering to Rocket Mortgage. Complaints against Branch Messenger Inc rose 315% after dismissal of a case accusing it of working with Walmart to collect more than $10 million in unfair fees from delivery drivers.

Erie Meyer, a former CFPB chief technologist who helped oversee the creation of its complaint database, said: "Consumers are telling the bureau that there is an emergency, and the bureau is not listening or acting on that information."

A complaint is an allegation, not a finding of wrongdoing. The wider trend also complicates any link to the dismissals. Publicly posted complaints across the whole database grew from nearly 2.7 million in 2024 to 6.3 million so far this year. The periods do not line up exactly, but the defendants' 75% increase is smaller than that overall rise.

The Guardian analysis shows complaints climbing at firms the CFPB stopped pursuing. It does not show the dismissals caused the increase, and the figures do not isolate what would have happened had the suits continued.

What to watch

The New York Fed's numbers show capital buffers thinner than a year ago, and the failures so far have been slow-moving. Curry's question about whether supervisors will enforce corrections quickly is the open one. The 2026 count of six could still change before year-end.