Florida's bank story is really interesting. It’s a mix of land booms, hurricanes, and lots of growth. If you bank in the state today, you're dealing with a system built on over a hundred years of ups and downs.
Banking in Florida started small after it became a state. The big change came in the 1920s with the massive **Florida Land Boom**. Everyone wanted a piece of the coast, and local banks popped up super fast to fund all the new construction and sales. Unsurprisingly, many of these banks were pretty fragile.
When the land bubble burst in 1926 (helped along by a bad hurricane), a huge number of these banks failed. This made the **Great Depression** even worse here than in many other places. It was a chaotic time, and folks learned the hard way about bank regulation.
For a long time, Florida banking was **highly localized**. Banks couldn't cross state lines easily, and local laws kept them from opening branches all over the state, too. This meant that if you lived in Miami, your bank was probably small and local.
Everything changed in the 1980s and 90s. Federal laws allowed banks to operate across state lines, and suddenly, big regional players from the Southeast started moving into Florida, viewing it as a massive growth opportunity. This is why today you see so many large national and regional banks with hundreds of **branches in Flordia**. It created a much more competitive market, but also meant fewer small, family-owned banks.
Today, Florida is one of the most important financial hubs in the U.S., largely due to its growth and its connection to Latin American commerce. While we're still dealing with issues like high property insurance costs, the banking system here is heavily regulated by both **Florida state agencies** and federal groups like the **FDIC**. The market is stable, though it sees lots of mergers and acquisitions—meaning banks are always getting bought up or changing names. The best part for consumers? Lots of options.