Large banks grew deposits 6.9% last year while small banks grew 4.2%

The industry deposit number that lands in your inbox is not the number your bank lives in. In the year to October 14, 2026, large domestically chartered banks grew deposits 6.9% while small ones grew 4.2% (Federal Reserve H.8 release). That is the Fed's own split of domestically chartered banks, and the two lines moved at different speeds in the same year.

The industry headline tracks the large-bank pace, not yours

The all-banks figure is the one you see in a trade email. Deposits at all commercial banks grew 7.1% in the year to October 14, 2026 (Federal Reserve H.8 release). A small bank that benchmarks against that figure is measuring itself against a number that sits next to the large-bank line of 6.9%, not the small-bank line of 4.2% (Federal Reserve H.8 release). Small and large here are the Fed's own grouping of domestically chartered banks by size, not a cut of the asset bands this report usually tracks.

If your bank grew deposits in the fours last year and you compared that to the headline, you looked behind. Compared to the small-bank line, the same growth reads differently. The benchmark you pick decides whether you are ahead or behind, and the two benchmarks are far apart.

The split matters most for rate strategy

The two figures are aggregates of thousands of banks each, so no single institution grew at exactly 4.2% or 6.9% (Federal Reserve H.8 release). What the split gives you is the right peer line to price against. A small bank setting CD specials or money market tiers is competing for balances in a slice of the market that added deposits more slowly than the large-bank slice did over the year to October 14, 2026.

That changes the question at the pricing table. The large-bank line of 6.9% is the pace the national brands set (Federal Reserve H.8 release). The small-bank line of 4.2% is the pace your peer set ran (Federal Reserve H.8 release). When you decide how far to move a rate, the gap between those two numbers is the room the large banks had that your peer group did not.

What to do about it

1. Pull your own year-over-year deposit growth for the twelve months ending in mid-October and set it beside the Fed's small-bank line of 4.2%. If you are under it, you are trailing the slower half of the Fed's split (Federal Reserve H.8 release).
2. Take both the small-bank line of 4.2% and the large-bank line of 6.9% to your next ALCO meeting and ask how your bank's growth compares to the small-bank line, and how far your rates sit from the national brands setting the large-bank pace (Federal Reserve H.8 release).
3. Run your attrition report for the last two quarters and size the balances that left against your own base, so you know how much new money you need to replace before you fund your next campaign.

Methodology

Figures come from the Federal Reserve's H.8 release, "Assets and Liabilities of Commercial Banks in the United States," comparing the week of October 14, 2026 with the week of October 15, 2025. Small and large here are the Fed's own split of domestically chartered commercial banks by size, not the $100M to $2B asset band this publication usually reports. The year-over-year figures are percent changes we computed from the Fed's reported deposit levels for each group (not seasonally adjusted): small at 4.2%, large at 6.9%, and all commercial banks at 7.1% (Federal Reserve H.8 release). The H.8 is a weekly aggregate of reported balances. It does not identify individual banks, it does not track money moving between the groups, and it does not explain why the groups grew at different rates.