According to proprietary data gathered by Collections & Credit Risk, the largest 100 commercial banks are continuing to improve collections performance. St. Louis-based First Banks, with $4.8 billion in assets, has a 1999 recovery rate of 91.1 percent. City National Corp. placed second, with an 84.2 percent recover rate. For the top 100 banks, the average recovery rate was around 20 percent. Some of the worst collectors were Citigroup, Bank of America, Bank One, and Chase.