At just five years old, Northwest Commercial Bank is a relatively new bank in Washington state. Northwest’s President and CEO Kurt Graff said with the financial crisis rocking big banks, that more business is coming to the smaller banks.

"They're moving out of the larger banks right now, and moving into smaller banks, like ours," Graff said.

Graff said it simply hasn't had time to get into any mortgages yet and certain kinds of mortgages triggered this crisis, so his bank is in pretty good shape.

Graff said people can do a few simple things to see if their bank is safe.

He said customers should really get to know their bank. If they can, customers should ask to talk to the president and ask how the bank is doing, Graff said.

There is also a lot of information available online, including from the FDIC.

"Get on the FDIC website, and pull up your bank's call reports, called 'call reports', they come up on a quarterly basis, and you can follow along your bank's progress or lack thereof," Graff said.

Chris Weber, an economics professor at Seattle University, said it can be tough to define which bank is safe and which ones are not fairing so well.

"It's pretty difficult to find out if your bank is highly exposed in the subprime mortgage market, for example, that's where bank's have gotten in trouble, recently," Weber said.

Graff cautions that the information online can be as much as three months old. “Call reports are usually three months behind, depending on when you check into them, but that's a good measure. It's a good measure of how your bank is doing," Graff said.