Meridian Bank is a free browser-based banking tycoon. You start as a small community lender with a modest pile of cash and a fragile balance sheet, and your job is to grow it into a financial empire — one quarter at a time — without going insolvent or triggering a bank run. This guide walks you through every system in the game, from your first deposit to your first billion-dollar milestone.
Your bank's success is measured by one number: equity. Equity is what you own outright — everything the bank holds (cash, outstanding loans, investments, and business ventures) minus what it owes its depositors. When you approve a good loan and it pays back with interest, your equity grows. When a borrower defaults, or a regulator fines you, or the stock market falls, your equity shrinks.
The first major win condition is reaching $10 million in equity. Get there and you've proven the bank is viable. But the game keeps going: there are escalating milestones all the way up to $1 billion — "Too Big To Fail", the point at which your bank becomes systemically important and attracts a whole new class of regulatory scrutiny (and a new pool of high-stakes events).
Meridian Bank is turn-based. Each turn is one financial quarter (three months). Within a quarter you make decisions; when you're ready, you press Close Quarter and the simulation resolves everything at once. A typical quarter looks like this:
Deposits are the raw fuel of a bank. They are money customers hand you for safekeeping — which means they are also a liability: you owe every dollar back on demand. The trick of banking is that you don't keep all that money idle; you lend and invest most of it, keeping only a fraction in reserve.
You control how fast deposits grow by setting your deposit rate — the annual interest you pay savers. Raise it and you'll pull customers away from your rival bank; lower it and you'll save on interest but grow more slowly. The right rate depends on the economy and on what your rival is offering. Paying 4% to attract deposits only makes sense if you can lend that money out at meaningfully more than 4%.
Lending is where a bank makes most of its money. Each quarter you receive a batch of loan applications, each showing the loan type, amount, term, interest rate, and the borrower's credit score. Approving a loan moves cash off your balance sheet now in exchange for a stream of interest payments over the loan's term — as long as the borrower doesn't default.
There are five loan types, each with a different size, term length, and risk profile:
| Loan type | Typical size | Term | Risk profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mortgage | $200k–$1.2M | 12–20 quarters | Large, long, usually well-scored |
| Business Loan | $120k–$900k | 8–16 quarters | Mid-size, neutral risk |
| Auto Loan | $25k–$90k | 4–8 quarters | Smaller, shorter, steady |
| Personal Loan | $20k–$150k | 4–12 quarters | Higher risk, weaker scores |
| Credit Line | $15k–$120k | 4–10 quarters | Highest risk, weakest scores |
The borrower's credit score is your single best signal. High-score borrowers rarely default; low-score borrowers pay a higher rate but are far more likely to stop paying — and when a borrower defaults, you only recover about 60% of the collateral, taking a loss on the rest. In a Boom, defaults are muted and you can afford to take chances; in a Recession, default risk rises sharply and lending standards should tighten.
This is the mechanic that separates surviving banks from failed ones. Your reserve ratio is the share of your deposits you hold as cash. Regulators require you to keep at least 10% in reserve at all times. Drop below that floor and you'll be hit with a regulatory fine (at least $50,000, scaling with the shortfall).
The danger is worse than a fine. If enough depositors demand their money back in a single quarter — a bank run — and you don't have the cash to honor those withdrawals, the bank fails outright. A run can pull roughly 40% of deposits in one quarter, so a bank that has lent out almost everything is a bank one bad event away from collapse.
Cash sitting in reserve earns a small interbank yield (about 2.2% a year), but you can do better by investing idle funds. There are three asset classes, trading return against risk:
Investments are liquid — you can sell them to raise cash — but selling at the wrong moment (say, dumping equities during a crash to cover a withdrawal) locks in losses. Match your investment mix to the economic outlook.
As you grow, you can fund business ventures — larger, longer-term commitments that build enterprise value beyond ordinary lending. They tie up capital but diversify how your bank makes money, and their value counts toward your total assets and equity.
Sometimes a weaker bank comes onto the market. Through the Mergers & Acquisitions panel you can buy failing or undervalued rivals to instantly absorb their deposits and scale. Acquisitions are one of the fastest ways to leap in size — but they cost cash up front, and buying a bank full of bad loans can import someone else's problems. Time your acquisitions for when you have the reserves to digest them.
You also have a persistent rival bank competing for the same depositors. Undercut their deposit rate, capitalize when they stumble, and watch for events where their failure sends customers flooding to you.
Each quarter can bring a random event that reshapes the board: the Fed raising or cutting rates, a housing bubble inflating mortgage demand, a major employer's layoffs spiking defaults, a cyberattack, a bond rally, a government stimulus package, a rival launching a rate war, and more. Once you cross into "too big to fail" territory, entirely new systemic events appear — failed stress tests, congressional hearings, breakup threats, and contagion. Reading each event and reacting the following quarter is the heart of the game.
You win by growing your equity past the milestones — $10 million first, then onward toward legendary "Too Big To Fail" status. Your final score reflects how large and how sound your bank became.
You lose in one of two ways: insolvency, when your liabilities exceed your assets and equity hits zero; or a fatal bank run, when you can't cover the withdrawals depositors demand. Both come down to the same discipline — grow aggressively, but never let your reserves run dry.
Ready to run your own bank? Everything above is playable right now, free, in your browser — no download, no account.
▶ Play Meridian BankKeep reading: the Strategy Guide covers advanced tactics for each phase of the game, the Banking Glossary defines every finance term you'll meet, and the FAQ answers common questions.