Aug. 1--Worried about the health of your local bank? Bankers in the Florida Keys want you to put things in perspective, and trust that they're doing OK.

TIB Bank

"We're very well capitalized, very well reserved" said Michael Carrigan, president and CEO of TIB Bank.

TIB has nine branches in the Florida Keys. The bank was founded in Islamorada as "The Islamorada Bank" and is now headquartered in Naples.

TIB reported a $6 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2007, and just reported a $4 million loss for the second quarter of this year, which ended June 30.

Carrigan said the losses are not related to the housing crisis, but to overall economic problems. TIB financed automobile loans through dealerships, and when people in Lee and Collier counties started losing jobs (unemployment in Lee County is 7.5 percent), they stopped making payments on their car loans.

TIB Bank is part of the publicly traded TIB Financial Corp. The company's stock share price is around $5.50, down from about $12 a year ago.

But the bank reduced its number of delinquent loans this spring, and Carrigan says the bank's mission has not changed. "There are some banks in the marketplace that are not lending. We're lending," he said.

First State Bank

First State Bank of the Florida Keys is a privately held corporation, and profit/loss information is not made public, but Karen Sharp, the bank's president and CEO, said the bank continues to have positive earnings and to build capital, and is performing above banks of similar size.

Like TIB, First State Bank never got involved with sub-prime mortgages. But it almost did. Sharp said the people who make up the bank's corporate board talked about it a couple of years ago, but decided against it, opting for lower earnings and slower growth.

"It was a difficult pill to swallow, but we just didn't think it was the right thing to do," she said.

As proof of the financial health of First State Bank, Sharp points to Big Pine Key, where the bank broke ground this week for a new branch at the corner of U.S. 1 and Key Deer Boulevard.

Marine Bank

Marine Bank, which has nine branches in the Florida Keys, is owned by Home BancShares, Inc. The parent company just reported second-quarter earnings of $5.7 million, compared to $5.1 million for the second quarter of 2007.

But Marine Bank has a one-star rating (out of a possible five stars) from bankrate.com, which rates the financial health of banks using publicly available information.

Stephanie Scuderi, marketing director at Marine Bank, says the one-star rating reflects three basic concerns -- weak earnings, deteriorating asset quality and below-normal rate of capital growth -- but that it doesn't tell the whole story.

"Marine's capital growth was slow because we have so much more capital than any other bank in the Keys or our peer banks," Scuderi wrote in an e-mail.

Scuderi said Marine Bank has fewer past-due loans than most banks in the Keys, and therefore better "credit quality," and the bank added to its loan reserves in the first quarter of 2008.

"Had we not done this, we would have achieved an all-time earnings record," she said.

-----

To see more of the Keynoter, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.keysnet.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NASDAQ-NMS:TIBB, NASDAQ-NMS:HOMB,

Story Source: Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon, Fla.