Insights, analysis, and field notes.
Guides on banking data, walkthroughs of FFIEC and UBPR metrics, and commentary on what's moving inside the call report filings.
Why TCE and Regulatory Capital Disagree: Lessons From 2023
This post is about why tangible common equity can disagree with regulatory capital.
Bank Failures and the FDIC Problem Bank List
Silicon Valley Bank had a tangible common equity ratio that had been declining for six quarters before March 2023. The concentration in long-duration securities …
Provision for Credit Losses: Why It Moves Bank Earnings
In Q1 2020, U.S. banks booked a combined $52.7 billion in provision for credit losses, nearly four times the prior-year quarter (FDIC Quarterly Banking …
Deposit Beta & Cost of Funds: What Bank Analysts Measure
Between Q1 2022 and Q4 2023, the Fed funds target rate rose 525 basis points. The median community bank saw its cost of funds …
Unrealized Losses on Bank Securities (AFS & HTM)
At year-end 2025, U.S. banks were still carrying about $306 billion of unrealized losses on investment securities ($99 billion available-for-sale, $207 billion held-to-maturity), well …
Bank Peer Group Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide
Tell someone a bank has a 3.5% net interest margin and you have told them almost nothing. Is that good? Depends entirely on whether …
Nonperforming Loans and the NPL Ratio Explained
At the peak of the 2008 credit cycle, the industry-wide noncurrent loan rate hit 5.4%, nearly one in twenty loan dollars had stopped performing. …
What Is the Net Charge-Off Rate? A Bank Credit Guide
In the fourth quarter of 2009, the net charge-off rate for U.S. commercial banks reached 3.3% annualized, a level that would be catastrophic for …
Bank Size Is Not Safety: Reading the Largest US Banks List
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. alone carried $4.09 trillion in assets at the bank charter level at June 30, 2026 (Call Report), a figure that …
Bank Stress Testing Explained: DFAST, CCAR, Scenarios
In the Fed's 2023 stress test, the severely adverse scenario assumed unemployment climbing to 10%, commercial real estate prices dropping 40%, and a broad …