Groups push FDIC for new banks

Federal banking regulators have had an unofficial moratorium on new banks for more than four years — a clampdown that's aided Gulf Coast community banks in at least one big way.

That help has come in less competition and a higher, if not impossible, barrier to entry. Several Gulf Coast bankers have made that point in past interviews, that institutions launched in 2008 and early 2009, the last approvals, don't have to face the shiny new bank around the corner. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp's post-2008 financial meltdown rules provided that security blanket.

But a pair of powerful industry lobbying groups, the Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Association of Bank Directors, want regulators to review the policies toward new bank applications. The organizations, in a joint letter delivered to the FDIC Dec. 2, say the agency's policy on de novo banks is unduly prohibitive. The FDIC has approved only one bank charter nationwide since 2011, the letter states.