How to Obtain a Bank Credit Rating

When the financial market experiences hardship, you might wonder if your bank or credit union is safe. A few online tools will help you obtain your bank's credit rating, tap into detailed financial information and show potential warning signs.

Instructions

1

Check out the Bank Rate Credit Rating website (see Resources). Choose your institution type (bank or credit union), the name of the financial institution and click "See results." After you put in the required information, this tool will produce a bank credit rating based on a variety of components, including liquidity, profitability and financial assets.

2

Interpret the bank-rating results. Bank Rate's tool ranks banks on a scale of one star to five stars, with five stars being the highest result. Bank Rate recommends using a bank with a four-star rating or higher.

3

Check out the memo section, which includes additional information about the bank or credit union, such as assets, equity and net income. You can view a company's percentile in such categories as earnings, asset quality, capital and liquidity. This information is located under the "Institutional Highlights" header in the memos section.