Three Honesdale-based banks ranked among the best community banks in the U.S. in terms of financial performance.
Measuring how much profit a bank generates from shareholder investments, industry magazine U.S. Banker compiled a list of the top-200 performers for its June edition.
The measurement, called a return on equity (ROE), mainly indicates noted profitability over a three-year period for banks with less than $2 billion in assets, as of Dec. 31, 2008.
Honesdale-based Dime Bank placed 20 with 16.54 percent (ROE); Honesdale National Bank 34, 14.98 percent; and Wayne Bank, 128, 11.91 percent; out of some 5,000 community banks throughout the country.
Dime Bank was the top performer among the 24 Pennsylvania community banks on the list.
“It’s just really solid performance,” said William W. Davis Jr., president and CEO of Wayne Bank in a phone interview with The Wayne Independent. “We were not in the sub-prime market or any of the other nonsense that you read about.”
 Wayne Bank Chief Financial Officer Lewis J. Critelli credited strong underwriting in residential and commercial loans, producing “good returns ever time” for the bank.
“Community banking in general ... is pretty strong,” said Critelli, noting the distinction between faltering national banks that have been ravaged with failed, exotic investments and bad debt.
Chief executives at Dime Bank and Honesdale National Bank were unavailable for comment.
FNCB, based in Dunmore, was rated 38 at 14.66 percent. FNCB has two branch offices in Wayne County. Community Bank Corp., Clarks Summit, has a branch in Lakewood; they ranked 141 at 11.74 percent.
“Virtually no community banks engaged in the highly risky lending and underwriting that fueled the financial crisis” and recession, published Independent Banker in its June edition.
Independent Banker also reported that community banks with $100 million to $1 billion in assets had an average return on equity of 3.11 percent nationally, highlighting the distinctive performance of the Honesdale banks.
The top ranked bank in the country was based in Lawrenceville, Ill., Hbancorporation Inc., with a three-year return on equity average of 26.10 percent. First Century Bankshares Inc., of Bluefield, W.Va., ranked 200 at 10.70 percent.
Pennsylvania had the most community banks on the list in the country after years of lagging behind state financial markets, such as Florida, Arizona and Nevada, which once churned excellent numbers before the onset of the U.S. housing collapse and the recession.