SunTrust Banks Inc., already the biggest bank in metro Atlanta, has increased its lead over its rivals.

SunTrust has $31 billion in deposits in metro Atlanta -- $10 billion more than Wachovia Corp. and $18 billion ahead of No. 3 Bank of America, according to recent data released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The new FDIC rankings -- officially called the Summary of Deposits report -- is the federal bank regulator's only annual assessment of how many deposits banks control relative to one another in cities across the country.

The FDIC compiles the market summary from data reported by the nation's banks on June 30.

Beyond the market's three largest banks (SunTrust, Bank of America and Wachovia) the market is both increasingly fragmented and highly consolidated. Local bankers have compared the Atlanta market to a barbell -- large on both ends, with very little in the middle.

Both ends, however, are fundamentally different.

One is large through deposit size.

SunTrust, Wachovia and Bank of America control 60.71 percent of Atlanta-area deposits, and have controlled nearly two-thirds of the market for several years.

The data reveal several trends about metro Atlanta community banks.

Walt Moeling, a banking attorney at Powell Goldstein LLP, said the data also indicates that competitiveness on both ends of the spectrum may be keeping midsized banks from entering Atlanta.

"We have this 60/40 split of deposits, and have for awhile now in the market," Moeling said. "There's just not a whole lot of room in the middle right now."