FAU Banking Initiative Reports List of U.S. Banks with Greatest Commercial Real Estate Exposure

An interesting report on business activities at Synovus Bank and other financial institutions by Rebel Cole, the Lynn Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor of Finance at Florida Atlantic University, was recently released on LinkedIn. As Cole writes, many astute commentators on the banking industry have been warning about future losses on commercial mortgages given that about $1 trillion in these are maturing and must be refinanced at much higher rates during the next 12 months. Cole calculated the total commercial real estate (CRE) exposure (CRE nonfarm-nonresidential and multifamily mortgages, CRE construction loans and unused CRE commitments) as a percentage of total equity in order to provide a broad measure of bank exposure to commercial real estate. A variation of this ratio is used by banking regulators to assess CRE exposures, and any ratio over 300% is viewed as excessive exposure to CRE. Based on data as of Dec. 31, 2025 (Q4), Cole created a list of the total CRE exposure of the 52 banks with greater than $10B in assets where their exposure exceeds 300% of total equity capital. (52 out of 152 large banks, 4,392 banks of any size.) Five have exposures greater than 500% of equity, and 17 have exposures greater than 400%.

Most prominent (by size) are #6 Flagstar Bank, #23 Valley National Bank, #26 Synovus Bank, #31 Zion Bancorp, #36 Columbia Bank (formerly Umpqua Bank), #46 East West Bank, and #48 Old National Bank, and #51 Comerica Bank, each of which has more than $50B in total assets. Among banks of any size, 1,585 have total CRE exposures greater than 300%, down from 1,607 in Q3, 1,697 in Q2 and 1,713 in Q1. Additionally, 842 have exposures greater than 400%, down from 866 in Q3, 958 in Q2 and 988 in Q1, 349 have exposures greater than 500%, down from 368 in Q3, 426 in Q2 and 449 in Q1, and 110 have exposures greater than 600%, down from 120 in Q3, 178 in Q2 and 281 in Q1. For comparison, the aggregate industry total CRE exposure is 135% of total equity ($3.53 trillion CRE vs. $2.61 trillion TE). These statistics are based upon Cole's calculations using publicly available Call report data downloaded from the FFIEC's Central Data Repository as of Feb. 15, 2026. Most of these lists will be available for download at the FAU Banking Initiative website. Cole provided the 52 most concerning institutions in the table below.