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Bank Regulators Seize Naples Bank

NAPLES (CBSMiami) — Bank regulators seized a Naples, Fla.-based bank this week, forcing customers to take their money elsewhere.

Royal Palm Bank of Florida had $87 million in assets and $85.1 million in deposits. Those deposits and essentially all the bank's assets will now be controlled by First National Bank of the Gulf Coast.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) currently insures bank customers' accounts up to $250,000. That means the deposit insurance fund will absorb the $13.5 million cost of insuring the Naples-based bank's customers.

The closure of Royal Palm Bank of Florida is the latest in a flurry of bank failures this year. However, the pace of closures has slowed sharply since peaking in 2010: To date in 2012, 38 banks have closed, compared to 58 by this time last year.

Even last year's pace is better than the harried pace of closures during the start of the Great Recession:

  • 2007 – 3
  • 2008 – 25
  • 2009 – 140
  • 2010 – 157*

*Greatest number of closures in any year since the savings and loan crisis two decades ago.

From 2008 through 2011, bank failures cost the fund an estimated $88 billion. The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009. But with failures slowing, the fund's balance turned positive in the second quarter of last year. By Dec. 31, it stood at $11.8 billion, according to the FDIC.

The FDIC expects failures from 2012 through 2016 to cost $12 billion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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