Signature Bank, a New York-based full-service commercial bank, announced that it was named the second best bank in the country by Forbes in its annual list of the Best Banks in America. Signature Bank’s position advanced one notch to the second slot in the 2014 list from 2013, when it ranked third. The 2014 list inclusion marks Signature Bank’s fourth consecutive appearance on the list, where each time it ranked in the top ten.

Signature Bank has been recognized industry wide throughout 2013. Other accolades consist of: ranking 7th in the list of Top Performing Big Banks domestically from the ABA Banking Journal, a trade publication; rating fifth in Bank Director Magazine’s (trade journal) annual Bank Performance Scorecard; and, being named the #1 Attorney Escrow Provider, the #2 Business Bank and the #2 Private Bank by the readers of the New York Law Journal in the legal periodical’s annual survey.

Forbes ranked the 100 largest publicly traded banks and thrifts using nine measures of financial health: return on average equity; net interest margin; nonperforming loans (NPLs) as a percentage of loans; nonperforming assets as percentage of assets; reserves as a percentage of NPLs; three capital ratios (Tier 1, risk-based and leverage) and revenue growth. All data was provided by Charlottesville, Va.-based financial data provider SNL Financial, with the exception of revenue growth. Forbes compiled the ranking of the best and worst banks based on an average of the individual ranks of each metric.

The fifth annual ranking of Forbes’ America’s Best and Worst Banks 2014 was released on December 19, 2013.