America's Best Banks 2022

To identify America's Best Banks and Bank Accounts, Newsweek worked in partnership with LendingTree, which culled candidates from an initial universe of more than 2,625 FDIC-insured financial institutions (credit unions were excluded from consideration for overall bank winner categories but included for individual account winner categories).

Data sources for the project included: DepositAccounts.com, information published by each bank or credit union, quarterly call reports filed with the FDIC by banks or NCUA by credit unions, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau complaints and mobile app reviews.

Best Bank winners were selected from among 2,508 financial institutions and assessed on more than 30 separate factors, covering the overall health of the bank, customer service performance and features, digital and branch presence, account and loan options, interest rate offerings and fees.

Among the specific data collected: the average service charges collected on deposit accounts during the first quarter of 2021; average interest paid on deposit accounts during the first quarter of 2021; the number of complaints submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and how quickly the bank responded, the kinds of loan and account products offered; mobile app scores; the kinds of customer service features offered; overall health of the bank as determined by DepositAccounts.com; and, depending on the Best Bank accolade, branch presence.

For Best Bank state winners, the Best Big Bank in each state needed to have at least one branch per 100,000 residents and at least $10 billion in assets, while the Best Small Bank in each state needed less than $10 billion in assets and had to be among the five banks with the most branches in the state.

For Best Customer Service, a bank needed to have responded to at least 97 percent of complaints filed with the CFPB in a timely fashion to be considered; other features such as languages provided on the bank's website and app as well as banking and credit card service lines were also evaluated.

Individual Best Bank account winners were selected from a pool of more than 2,625 financial institutions that included 125 credit unions open to anyone to join.

Criteria included: current interest rate; average interest rate over the past year; minimum deposit required to open an account, the monthly service fee charged to maintain the account and how easily it could be avoided; fees charged for nonsufficient funds, overdraft, or/and overdraft protection; amount charged to use an out-of-network ATM; amount refunded for out-of-network ATM usage; cost to replace a debit card; whether requirements like online banking or debit card usage must be met to get top rates; the bank's average mobile app score; branch presence; the bank's financial strength; and, for CD accounts, number of days of interest lost for withdrawing early.