AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Several bank failures caused concern surrounding depositors’ financial safety.

Locally, Amarillo National Bank and First Bank Southwest, reassured customers their banks were sound and gave explanations for other banks’ failures.

“The Silicon Valley Bank was really into tech startups venture capital,” said Andy Marshall President and CEO of First Bank Southwest. “Tech’s had a really hard time for the last year and as a result, they’ve been burning through the cash so their depositors were taking out money faster than they could replace it.”

For Signature Bank the issue was in cryptocurrency.

“With the collapse of the trading platform FTX and the troubles of some of the other platforms plus the underlying cryptocurrencies themselves, some of their challenges, said Marshall. “Their outflows were outpacing their inflows when it came to their deposit. So as a result, they were burning through them too fast.”

Once regulators saw it was possible the banks could go under they stepped in.

Marshall continued “They stepped in and took control of the banks under what’s called a bridge bank. So, each continues to operate as a bank today, but under a different name controlled by the FDIC.”

Amarillo National Bank Senior Vice President Invest Officer Matt Ramsey shared that the actions taken by the two banks is not typical.

“These are outlier banks, they took a lot of risk, risk that that shouldn’t be taken,” said Ramsey. “Locally, we focus on good sound banking practices, and folks don’t have to worry about their money.”

Both ANB and FBSW spent time assuring customers their money is safe throughout the week.

“We’re completely different we’re a community bank, that banks families that bank households and banks, small businesses, we have tons of small depositors that are out here every day,” said Marshall. “We’re not focused in large institutional funds, like these banks.”

According to Ramsey First Bank Southwest has contingency funding in place and local banks are here for their customers.

“Your Community Bank is still here for you as they have been for centuries in the past, said Marshall.”