Business Alabama recently selected CCB Community Bank as one of the Top 10 community banks in Alabama.

The monthly business magazine chose 10 “Best Performing Community Banks in Alabama,” based upon pre-tax return on assets, as reported by the FDIC for the year ending Dec. 31, 2014. The magazine ranked CCB No. 6.

Community banks are finally seeing signs of recovery from the aftermath of the Great Recession, Alabama Banks Association president and CEO Scott Latham told the magazine.

“The slow signs of a recovering economy we are seeing across our state and country have in turn facilitated improved performance among community banks as well as other segments of our business and industry,” Latham said. “We expect those trends to improve even more in 2015.”

Business Alabama cited CCB’s 1.95 percent return on assets.

The bank has $434.6 million in total assets, up from $427 million in 2013, according to the December 2014 FDIC report. It has $353 million in deposits, a pre-tax ROA of 1.95 percent, and an after-tax ROA of 1.82 percent.

ROA, or return on investment, is calculated by dividing a company’s annual earnings by its total assets. It is sometimes referred to as “return on investment.”

CCB Community Bank chairman and CEO Tom Lane told Business Alabama that diversification helped his bank weather the economic downturn.

“Back a few years ago, so many banks had a lot of their loans in development loans, and when the market went down and housing went bust a lot of banks got hurt throughout the country,” he said. “We diversified, meaning we had some in agriculture, we had some crop lines. We had some car loans. We had some equity lines and residential real estate.”

That diversity is spread over several geographical areas, he said.

“About 65 percent of all of our loans are commercial,” Lane said. “We have agricultural loans, manufacturing, small businesses and retail businesses. It runs the gamut.”

CCB has locations in Andalusia, Opp, Crestview and Niceville.