There are lingering effects: You don't see as many community banks as a decade ago.
For a while, it seemed federal regulators closed a bank every Friday.
So many banks fell and for essentially the same reason: bad loans. Regular closings became a ritual of the Great Recession — in Florida and across the country.
"When people didn't repay their loans, that's when our banks had to write off these loans and it hit their capital. Then you know what happened after that," said Alex Sanchez, president and CEO of the Florida Bankers Association.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. swooped down on the troubled lenders and seized their assets, putting them into the hands of other banks in waiting. To unsuspecting customers, the change seemed to happen overnight.
From 2007 to 2012, more than 450 banks failed across the country, according to the FDIC.
The recession, which lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, spurred new financial regulations that led to more consolidation in the banking industry and discouraged the opening of new banks, which must raise a lot more capital.
"The FDIC has basically gotten very tough across the board, and that makes it very difficult for banks to operate because of these regulatory burdens. What happens is that so many banks just started selling out," said Ken Thomas, a longtime economist and banking consultant based in Miami.
Most of the new regulations came from the adoption of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which President Trump has vowed to "do a big number on" because he believes it's too burdensome for all banks, especially smaller ones.
About 85% of banks that failed in the U.S. from 2008 to 2011 were smaller ones with assets of less than $1 billion — and the majority were concentrated in 10 states led by Georgia and Florida, according to a report by Face the Facts USA.
Lee and Collier counties in Florida saw their fair share of failures. There were 10 from 2009 to 2013, stretching from Marco Island to Cape Coral.
One of the most high-profile collapses involved Naples, Fla.-based Orion Bank, which ended in prison sentences for its ex-CEO and president, Jerry J. Williams, and two other bank employees for their role in a fraud conspiracy.
The scheme — orchestrated by Williams — involved illegally raising more capital for the bank and selling off bad loans to a borrower to make Orion appear in better financial shape than it was so regulators wouldn't shutter it. The bank saw a wave of defaults on big construction and development loans after the real estate boom went bust in Southwest Florida.
After spending nearly six years at an Alabama prison camp and six months at a halfway house, Williams was released Oct. 30. Court records show he's settled in Brentwood, Tenn., where he's still under supervised probation.
Edison National, the oldest locally owned and operated community bank in Lee County, never faced the threat of failure. Why? Seasoned bankers and a mission of safety and soundness, said bank president Robbie Roepstorff.
"We just stuck to basic, solid principles of banking, and we managed the bank," she said. "We've always been on the more solid, conservative side of banking."
Garrett Richter, the president of First Florida Integrity Bank, based in Naples, Fla., remembers how tough it was to open a bank during the recession. He and Gary Tice, who serves as the bank's chairman and CEO, started the institution in 2010.
The bank has mostly grown organically through its own resources but has acquired several financial institutions since it opened.
But tighter lending requirements in the aftermath of the recession affected First Florida Integrity in many ways. It doesn't offer residential mortgage loans because the business is "just over-regulated," Richter said.
Across Florida and the country, banks are much healthier now. Bankers are more cautious about the loans they approve, requiring more money down and basing their decisions on real equity, not "phantom equity" in overvalued property as they did leading up to the recession when home prices skyrocketed, Richter said.
Longtime Sarasota banker Jody Hudgins, now a chief credit officer for First Florida Integrity, said there are many lessons to be learned from the recession. For bankers, he said, there's no substitute for experience in evaluating borrowers and their ability to repay loans.
Doug Meschko, director of market research and a land broker for Land Solutions in Fort Myers, Fla., said times have definitely changed when it comes to lending.
He got a loan for a new home last year, putting down 50%, and his lenders still put him through a rigorous review.
"They don't let somebody buy three condos with 2% down each like they did back then," he said.
Many bankers changed careers as a result of the recession. Some have become stock brokers or sell financial insurance. Others made bigger job shifts or retired all together.
Employment in the financial sector fell about 29% from 2007 to 2011 in Collier County, but it has grown 27% since 2011, said Christopher Westley, director of Florida Gulf Coast University's Regional Economic Research Institute. Lee County saw a drop of 28% from 2005 to 2011 — and since 2011, employment has increased 27%.
Proponents argue deregulation could create more jobs here and around the country by making it easier for community banks to form.
"Community banks play a vital role in our economy," said Sanchez, with the Florida Bankers Association. "Community banks give 50% of the small-business loans in the United States, and small business is what our economies are based on here in our country."
Instead of a one-size-fits-all-approach, he said financial regulations need to be more tailored to the model and the risk profile of the banks, so they're not so overly burdensome on smaller banks.
In the 15 years before the adoption of Dodd-Frank, the country saw an average of 130 banks started a year. Since 2011, the FDIC has approved 15 applications for new banks in the U.S. Several of those banks have not yet opened.
But the financial crisis didn't just hit banks.
Tampa-based Suncoast, Florida's largest credit union, lost $76.6 million in 2008, $77 million in 2009 and nearly $30 million in 2010. Despite such losses, the lender made a decision not to cut employees or close offices. Employees took pay cuts, with senior ones getting the biggest, said Kevin Johnson, president and CEO.
The credit union continued lending through the recession and worked with customers to modify loans as they became troubled, which reduced its losses and built loyalty with members that helped it survive, Johnson said.
Today, Suncoast continues to expand.
It is nearing the $10 billion asset mark, and with that milestone will come more regulatory hoops, requiring it to add more employees in compliance. While Trump is pushing for deregulation, Johnson said he recognizes it will be an uphill battle in Congress.
The experience from the recession, he said, has Suncoast much better prepared for the next one.
The lesson to learn is to "guard against the temptation to become complacent about the risks facing the financial system," said Martin Gruenberg, the FDIC's chairman, in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., a few months ago.
He noted the country paid a high price for not recognizing the magnitude of the risks it faced: Nearly 9 million people lost their jobs, more than 12 million homeowners faced foreclosure and millions of other households remained underwater on their mortgages for many years.
Reforms have gone a long way to strengthen the country's financial institutions, Gruenberg said.
FDIC-insured institutions reported a record $171.3 billion in net income for 2016, up 44% from 2011.
"It is now more likely that in the next downturn, large U.S. banking organizations will play a stabilizing role, rather than contributing to a deeper economic contraction," Gruenberg said.
Community banks, he said, hold 13% of banking assets in the U.S. but account for 43% of small loans to businesses and farms.
He warned there are always challenges that could quickly change the outlook in the financial system, from shifts in monetary policy to market corrections.
"While we all hope that the current high level of economic activity will continue, it would be a mistake, it seems to me, to take for granted that the next 10 years will be equally benign," Gruenberg said.