Research

The Oregon Bank Local campaign and this website are based on hours of research.  We examined every bank and credit union doing business in Oregon to evaluate how local they are.

Our goal is to help you ask the right questions when considering opening an account at a local financial institution.

What do we mean by “local?”

“Looking local” is a popular tactic that some banks and credit unions use to market themselves in our communities.  However, we felt there was a need to provide real, objective, and measurable data that actually cuts through the marketing campaigns and determines which banks and credit unions are truly local.

What do the bank scores mean?

“Local” can mean a lot of things.  Here is how we defined it and how we rated the banks:

• Where are they are headquartered?
  We researched the location of each institution’s headquarters operation.  If an institution has its top local leadership in the state it means the decision makers will better understand the uniqueness of our local economies. Local HQs also means more direct spending into the local community.
• Who owns the institution?
  Ownership matters.  If a financial institution is owned by absentee and institutional investors it will make different decisions than if it is owned by members of our communities.
• How many of their branches are located in Oregon?  
  This gives us an idea of what percentage of their business is focused on the Oregon market.  Is a credit union doing business in three states but maintaining 80% of its branches in Oregon?  Is a bank headquartered in Washington state but running 60% of its business locations in Oregon?  These are the kinds of things we teased out in our research.
• How much small business and family farm lending do they do?
  Community banks are the biggest lenders to community scale business and agriculture.  Without local lenders specializing in small business and family farm lending our communities will face greater forces of consolidation and homogenization by distant corporations, so if supporting these sectors of the local economy are important to you this data will help you evaluate institutions with this filter.

See our full research

You can see all of our research by going here:

OR Banks and CUs – Full Research