BankUnited Routing Number: A South Florida Bank Built From the Ashes of Failure

The largest bank failure in Florida history

In May 2009, federal regulators seized BankUnited FSB, a Coral Gables-based thrift that had gorged on option-ARM mortgages during the Florida housing bubble. With $12.8 billion in assets, it was the largest bank failure in Florida history and one of the costliest of the entire financial crisis. The FDIC estimated the failure would cost its insurance fund $4.9 billion. Depositors were protected, but shareholders and unsecured creditors were wiped out.

The failure was not a surprise to anyone paying attention. BankUnited FSB had concentrated its lending in South Florida real estate during the most inflated housing market in the country, offering payment-option ARMs that allowed borrowers to pay less than the interest owed - with the unpaid interest added to the principal. When Florida home prices collapsed, these loans defaulted at catastrophic rates. The bank was a textbook case of what happens when a financial institution confuses a bubble for a business model.

Rebuilding with private equity discipline

Almost immediately after the FDIC seized BankUnited FSB, a private equity consortium led by John Kanas, a legendary New York banker who had built and sold North Fork Bank, acquired the failed bank's deposits and a portion of its assets. Kanas and his investors brought something the old BankUnited lacked: rigorous underwriting discipline and a strategy focused on commercial and business banking rather than residential mortgages.

The new BankUnited went public in January 2010, less than a year after the failure, raising $900 million in one of the fastest post-failure IPOs in banking history. Under Kanas's leadership, the bank rebuilt itself as a commercial-focused institution serving South Florida's business community - particularly real estate developers, healthcare companies, and international businesses with ties to Latin America and the Caribbean. By the time Kanas retired in 2018, BankUnited had grown to over $30 billion in assets with a completely different risk profile than its predecessor.

BankUnited routing number information

BankUnited's routing number is 267090473. The 267 prefix identifies it as processed through the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which serves the Florida district. This routing number applies to all BankUnited deposit accounts - personal and business checking, savings, and money market accounts - across its Florida and New York operations.

For domestic wire transfers and ACH payments, use routing number 267090473. BankUnited also operates branches in the New York metropolitan area, and these locations use the same routing number. The number can be verified on your checks, through BankUnited online banking, or by contacting any branch.

South Florida

South Florida is one of the most unusual banking markets in the United States. The region functions as a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean, with significant cross-border capital flows, a multilingual business community, and industries - hospitality, real estate development, international trade - that require banking relationships comfortable with complexity. BankUnited has positioned itself to serve this market with bilingual banking teams, international wire capabilities, and an understanding of the regulatory nuances that come with cross-border business.

The competitive landscape includes global banks like Citibank and HSBC that serve multinational clients, national banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, and dozens of community banks - many of them catering to specific Latin American diaspora communities. BankUnited occupies a middle ground: large enough to handle sophisticated commercial transactions but local enough to maintain the relationship-driven service that South Florida business owners expect.

Built from failure, built for control

BankUnited's resurrection shows what is possible when financial institutions are rebuilt with discipline and clear-eyed risk management. Slash brings that same philosophy to business spending - providing companies with corporate cards that enforce policies automatically, expense management that eliminates manual processes, and real-time dashboards that ensure financial teams always know exactly where the money is going. In South Florida or anywhere else, visibility is the antidote to financial surprises.