The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and peers like First Republic Bank made 2023 the most tumultuous year for the banking industry since the 2008 crisis, but for some small community banks, the chaos hardly registered. City Holding Co., the parent company of West Virginia's City National Bank with $6.2 billion in assets, is based in the capital city of Charleston, in a region of Appalachia known for coal. West Virginia is a state whose population of 1.
8 million is on the decline, but president and CEO Skip Hageboeck sees that as an asset instead of a drawback. Major banks don’t reinvest much in West Virginia and surrounding towns in Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky to compete for customers, and City National has steadily increased its market share. Thanks to its focus primarily on retail banking rather than catering to businesses, just $894 million out of $5.1 billion (17.5%) in deposits are uninsured, according to its most recent call report, compared with 41% of total deposits at all U.S