In this paper, an iterative optimal method is proposed to design the prototype filters for a fast filter bank (FFB) with low complexity, aiming to control the optimum ripple magnitude tolerance of each filter according to the overall specifications. This problem is formulated as an optimization problem for which the total number of multiplications is to be minimized subject to the constrained ripple in the passband and stopband. In the following, an iterative solution is proposed to solve this optimization problem for the purpose of obtaining the impulse response coefficients with low complexity at each stage. Simulations are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed scheme and show that compared with the original method, the proposed scheme can reduce about 24.24% of multiplications. In addition, the proposed scheme and the original method provide similar mean square error (MSE) and the mean absolute error (MAE) of the frequency response.