How the Trust Grade works

The Trust Grade is a single A–F score we calculate for every FDIC-insured bank and NCUA-insured credit union in the United States. It exists to answer one question the government databases don't: all things considered, how does this institution compare?Here is precisely how it's built — nothing is hidden.

The two pillars

Every grade blends two sub-scores, each on a 0–100 scale.

1. Financial strength (is my money safe?)

• Capital ratio — equity-to-assets for banks (FDIC), net worth ratio for credit unions (NCUA). This is the dominant input; it's what "well-capitalized" actually means. Anchored so the regulatory well-capitalized threshold maps to a passing score, with a healthy buffer rewarded.
• Profitability — return on assets (ROA). Consistent profitability is a stability signal; sustained losses are a warning.
• Stability — large year-over-year asset shrinkage is flagged.

2. Customer experience (will I get jerked around?)

• Complaint rate — CFPB complaints normalized per $1B in assets, so a giant bank and a community bank are compared fairly.
• Timeliness — the share of complaints the institution answered on time.
• Relief rate — how often complaints close with monetary or non-monetary relief to the consumer.

How the pillars combine

The complaint pillar's weight scales with how much complaint data exists.An institution with thousands of complaints is graded roughly half on financials and half on experience. A small bank with only a handful of complaints is graded mostly on financials — we don't let three complaints define a bank. And an institution with no CFPB complaints on file is graded on financials alone and is never penalized for that absence (for a small institution, no complaints is good news, not missing data).

Letter cutoffs: A 90+, B 80–89, C 70–79, D 60–69, F below 60.

Data sources

• Banks: FDIC BankFind Suite (institution financials + branch locations).
• Credit unions: NCUA Quarterly Call Report data.
• Complaints: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database.

Matching complaints to institutions

The CFPB files complaints under a company's legal name, which often differs from the chartered bank name. We match conservatively: a curated map covers the large institutions that hold nearly all complaint volume, and automatic matches are rejected when the name is too generic or the resulting complaint rate is implausibly high. When we can't match an institution with confidence, we show "no complaints on file" rather than risk attributing another company's record to it.

Limitations

• The Trust Grade is a general-information comparison, not financial advice and not a guarantee of safety. FDIC and NCUA insurance protect deposits up to legal limits regardless of grade.
• Complaint counts reflect what consumers reported to the CFPB; they are not findings of wrongdoing.
• Financial figures are point-in-time from the most recent published call reports.

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