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Washington’s economy may be doing better than the nation as a whole, but the banks based here are not.

Although Washington state doesn’face to face have the plummeting home values or mass foreclosures that have stunned Florida and California, publicly traded banks in the pass as a group scent the perseverance in profitability and have a higher share of sour loans than the national middle.

What’s more, banks in the express are setting aside almost less money to cover their losses than their peers transversely the country.

“These banks probably did a decent footing of business with California builders, so the whole West Coast was hit hard,” reported Sebastian Hindman, a elder algebraist at SNL Financial in Charlottesville, Va.

Washington Mutual, that was based in Seattle, became the largest bank failure in U.S. history in September when it was seized by treaty regulators behind devastating losses in its pledge portfolio.

Hindman looked at 16 other state banks and plant that during the time that they are well-capitalized by busy vigor standards, their performance lags their peers.

Five publicly traded banking companies in Washington were not profitable for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, according to data compiled by SNL.

They are AmericanWest Bancorp., of Spokane; Banner Corp., of Walla Walla; Cowlitz Bancorp., of Longview; First Financial Northwest, of Renton; and WSB Financial Group, of Bremerton.

Victor Karpiak, CEO of First Financial, said its profits turned negative latest year when it converted from mutual to stock ownership and donated additional than $16 million in stock to a new foundation it created to meet common needs.

He blames construction loans for a rise in First Financial’s “nonperforming” loans, which are loans on which a bank is no longer collecting interest.

The company has money set aside to cover only 35 percent of its nonperforming loans should they become “charge-offs,” which happens when a bank has given up ever collecting on them.

That is below the 47 percent ratio for the group of 16 Washington banks. And the state’s banks as a group impose upon far behind the 91 percent that banks nationwide have set aside for in posse loan losses.

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