WGA Publishes Bank Top 50 Rankings for Q3 2025

July 29, 2025 | Newswire | Whalen Global Advisors LLC (WGA) has published the latest edition of the WGA Top 50 Banks, the fifty top performing large commercial banks in the US. Drawn from the members of Peer Group 1 and other sources, WGA screens the group based upon five proprietary measures of financial and market performance.

"The banking group has rebounded strongly since the lows of April," notes WGA Chairman Christopher Whalen. "The top performing bank stock in Q2 2025 was SoFi Technologies, Inc. (SOFI), which benefited from the upsurge in financials and crypto stocks. SOFI is making great progress, but a large number of stablecoin firms that are touting a future bank charter will likely fail as a business."

The top ten banks in the WGA Top 50 Banks include:

Source: WGA LLC

The WGA Top 50 Banks represents the best performers among more than 100 banks over $10 billion in assets. WGA scores the entire population of banks each quarter using a proprietary model where size is only one factor. Most ETFs, for example, select members solely by size. The WGA approach ensures that the top scoring banks have the highest rank on the WGA Bank Top 50 list regardless of size. All of the constituents of the WGA Bank Top 50 are available to subscribers to the IRA Premium Service.

"Synchrony Financial (SYF), a provider of white label credit cards, was the top performing bank in our group in Q2 2025, suggesting that investors are not worried about a consumer recession," Whalen notes. "After volatility in Q2 2025, a number of leading financials are now firmly back in the top 10, including Goldman Sachs (GS), Charles Schwab (SCHW) and East-West Bancorp (EWBC). But we also see two regionals, Regions (RF) and Fifth-Third (FITB)."

The screenshot below shows the top ten members of our test group sorted for 1-year stock returns:

Source: Bloomberg (07/25/25)

Whalen noted that SOFI, which was the best performing bank stock over the past year by a large margin, only ranked 39th in the WGA Bank Top 50 due to weak operating efficiency. "SOFI has an efficiency ratio close to 90 and has yet to grow into the overhead of the fintech model. They need to double assets per employee to get efficiency down toward the peer average in the 60s, but investors are not bothered about profitability. In this speculative market, the hotter stocks are the unprofitable stories."

About Whalen Global Advisors LLC

Whalen Global Advisors LLC (WGA) is a New York consulting, risk advisory and publishing company that focuses on financial institutions and global markets. WGA publishes The Institutional Risk Analyst (ISSN 2692-1812), the WGA Top 50 Banks, and commentary on the capital markets, industry reports and company profiles. For additional information, please contact us at: info@rcwhalen.com

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