Poll: Americans’ faith in banks low after failures

Only 10% of U.S. adults say they have high confidence in the nation’s banks and other financial institutions, a new poll finds. That’s down from the 22% who said they had high confidence in 2020.

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank this month, the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research also finds that a majority say the government is not doing enough to regulate the industry.

The underwhelming assessment of America’s banks and bank regulation comes after a series of shocks brought back disturbing memories of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

Silicon Valley Bank, the nation’s 16th-biggest, failed March 10 after making risky bets in the bond market. Two days later, regulators closed New York-based Signature Bank, which had gotten involved in cryptocurrencies. Across the Atlantic Ocean, long-troubled Credit Suisse was acquired by rival UBS on Sunday in a shotgun marriage designed to restore confidence in global financial institutions.

In the United States, the tumult has raised questions among policymakers about 2018 legislation that rolled back strict regulations put in place after the financial crisis.

The poll suggests the U.S. public shares that concern: 56% say the government isn’t doing enough to regulate banks and other financial institutions, while 27% say it’s doing the right amount and 15% say it’s regulating too much. The worry about under-regulation is bipartisan: 63% of Democrats say current bank regulation is insufficient, as do 51% of Republicans.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Philip Metscher, 53, a stay-at-home father of seven in Sacramento, California, said he has little faith in bankers or the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them.

“It’s like they have free rein to do whatever they want with money,” said Metscher, a Republican.

The poll finds that in addition to the 10% of Americans saying that they have high confidence in the nation’s banking institutions, 57% do have some confidence; 31% have hardly any.

Though confidence in banks and financial institutions has decreased even since the last time that question was asked on an AP-NORC poll in 2020, low confidence among Americans in their public institutions is nothing new — the General Social Survey, which has tracked trends in public opinion for decades, shows that confidence in institutions ranging from the financial industry to organized religion and from the news media to Congress has declined substantially since the 1970s.

There’s been little change in the already glum assessment of the U.S. economy since a month ago, before the recent banking system turmoil, the poll shows. Only a quarter say national economic conditions are good; three quarters call them poor.