Ranked by total assets as of year-end 2025 — the four largest U.S. banks alone hold more than $12.6 trillion, over double the combined assets of Canada's "Big Five."
Pictured: JPMorgan Chase, #1 with $4.43 trillion in total assets.
| Rank | Bank | Total assets | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JPMorgan Chase | $4.43T | United States |
| 2 | Bank of America | $3.41T | United States |
| 3 | Citigroup | $2.66T | United States |
| 4 | Wells Fargo | $2.15T | United States |
| 5 | Goldman Sachs | $1.80T | United States |
| 6 | Royal Bank of Canada | $1.70T | Canada |
| 7 | Morgan Stanley | $1.58T | United States |
| 8 | TD Bank Group | $1.53T | Canada |
| 9 | Bank of Montreal | $1.08T | Canada |
| 10 | Scotiabank | $1.07T | Canada |
| 11 | CIBC | $815B | Canada |
| 12 | U.S. Bancorp | $676B | United States |
| 13 | Capital One | $659B | United States |
| 14 | PNC Financial Services Group | $574B | United States |
| 15 | National Bank of Canada | $421B | Canada |
No matching rows.
JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the Western Hemisphere by a wide margin, with a footprint spanning consumer banking, investment banking, asset management, and commercial banking under one roof. Its roots reach back further than any other bank on this list, to the Bank of the Manhattan Company, chartered in 1799 by Aaron Burr under the guise of a water-supply utility.[1]
Bank of America serves more than 69 million consumer and small-business clients through one of the largest retail branch and ATM networks in the United States. It began in 1904 as the Bank of Italy, a San Francisco institution founded by Amadeo Giannini to serve immigrant customers larger banks turned away, and Giannini famously salvaged his bank's cash and gold from the rubble of the 1906 earthquake to keep lending while rivals stayed shut.[1]
Citigroup's institutional business spans more countries than any other U.S. bank, a legacy of its long history as one of the first genuinely global banks. Its oldest predecessor, the City Bank of New York, was chartered in 1812, making Citi's lineage one of the longest continuously operating in American banking.[1]
Wells Fargo traces its roots to the stagecoach express business of the California Gold Rush era, and remains one of the largest mortgage and small-business lenders in the country today. Founders Henry Wells and William Fargo had already built the dominant express-delivery network American Express before launching Wells Fargo in 1852 specifically to serve California.[1]
Goldman Sachs is the only bank in North America's top five built primarily around investment banking and trading rather than traditional consumer deposits, a distinct business mix among its peers on this list. The firm was founded in 1869 by Marcus Goldman, a Bavarian immigrant who started out buying and selling merchants' promissory notes from a one-room basement office in Lower Manhattan.[1]
Canada's largest bank by assets, Royal Bank of Canada was founded as the Merchants Bank of Halifax in 1864 and took its current name in 1901; it now ranks among the ten most valuable banks in the world by market capitalization. In 2024 it completed a $13.5 billion acquisition of HSBC's Canadian operations, its largest deal ever, adding roughly 780,000 clients.[2]
The only bank in North America's top ten built primarily around investment banking rather than retail deposits, Morgan Stanley was founded in 1935 by a group of partners who split off from J.P. Morgan & Co. after Depression-era reforms forced a separation of commercial and investment banking. It converted to a bank holding company in September 2008 to survive the financial crisis, a structural shift that gave it access to Federal Reserve funding it had never needed as a pure investment bank.[1]
Formed by the 1955 merger of the Bank of Toronto and The Dominion Bank, TD is Canada's second-largest bank and, through its US subsidiary TD Bank, N.A., also ranks among the ten largest banks operating in the United States. Its Toronto headquarters sit in the Toronto-Dominion Centre, a black steel-and-glass complex designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1967, one of the architect's last projects before his death two years later.[2]
Chartered in 1817, Bank of Montreal is Canada's oldest bank, and its Chicago-based BMO Harris Bank subsidiary gives it a substantial US Midwest retail-banking footprint alongside its home Canadian business. Originally chartered as the Montreal Bank, it issued Canada's first domestic currency from its founding until the Bank of Canada took over that role in 1935.[2]
Founded in Halifax in 1832, Scotiabank is Canada's most internationally focused bank, with a particularly deep retail presence across Latin America and the Caribbean that sets it apart from its more domestically concentrated Canadian peers. It adopted the Scotiabank name as its worldwide brand in 1975 and now operates roughly 2,000 branches across more than 25 countries.[2]