How to Read the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile
The Quarterly Banking Profile is the FDIC's aggregate report on every insured institution, and it is the standard reference for industry-level banking figures.
Almost every industry-level banking statistic you have read traces back to one document. The FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile aggregates the call reports of FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions into a single quarterly report on earnings, asset quality, loan growth, deposits, capital, and the health of the Deposit Insurance Fund. (Source: FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile.)
The FDIC publishes it about 55 days after the end of the quarter, which puts it in late February, late May, late August, and late November. That lag is the first thing to know about it: the QBP is authoritative and it is never current.
Two scope notes the FDIC states and most readers miss. U.S. branches of institutions headquartered abroad and non-deposit trust companies are excluded unless a table says otherwise. And where a bank owns another bank, subsidiary institution reports are included alongside the parent’s, so some figures double-count; the FDIC makes no adjustment for it and says so.
What Each Section Covers
Earnings. Aggregate net income, return on assets, net interest margin, noninterest income and expense, and the provision for credit losses. The industry NIM series here is the number most commonly quoted in banking coverage.
Asset quality. Noncurrent loans and leases, net charge-offs, the noncurrent rate by major loan category, and the coverage ratio of reserves to noncurrent loans. The category breakouts are where the useful detail sits, because an aggregate noncurrent rate can hold steady while one loan category deteriorates sharply.
Loans and leases. Balances and quarterly growth by category. This is the cleanest public read on where credit is actually being extended.
Deposits and funding. Deposit balances and growth, other borrowed funds, and the estimated split between insured and uninsured deposits.
Capital. Aggregate regulatory capital ratios and equity capital.
Institution counts and structure. The number of insured institutions, new charters, mergers, and failures.
The Deposit Insurance Fund. The fund balance, the reserve ratio against insured deposits, and assessment income. This section is short and it is the one most readers skip.
Community bank performance. Reported separately, using the FDIC’s research definition of a community bank rather than a simple asset cutoff.
Where the Problem Bank List Sits
The QBP reports the number of institutions on the FDIC’s Problem Bank List and their combined assets. It never reports their names.
That distinction is worth stating plainly because it is misunderstood constantly. A “problem bank” is an institution with a composite CAMELS rating of 4 or 5. CAMELS ratings are confidential supervisory information, so the identity of the institutions is not disclosed and will not be, absent a public enforcement action or failure. What the QBP gives you is the count and the aggregate assets, which is a genuine early-warning series at the industry level and tells you nothing about any individual bank.
The count moves slowly and it moves ahead of failures. A rising problem bank count with flat failures usually means deterioration is being worked out rather than resolved, which is the normal path. The relationship between that count and the eventual failure record is covered in the guide to bank failures and the problem bank list.
Two Numbers in the Fund Section Worth Knowing
The Deposit Insurance Fund section carries two figures that carry more information than their placement suggests.
The reserve ratio is the fund balance divided by estimated insured deposits. The Dodd-Frank Act set its statutory minimum at 1.35%, and if the ratio falls below that, or is expected to within six months, the FDIC generally must adopt a restoration plan to restore it to at least 1.35% within eight years. There is a completed cycle to point at rather than a hypothetical: pandemic-era deposit growth pushed the ratio to 1.30% at June 30, 2020, the Board adopted a restoration plan that September targeting 1.35% by September 2028 and amended it in 2022 to raise assessment rates, and the FDIC ceased operating under that plan in the third quarter of 2025 once the ratio had recovered. That mechanism is what converts a fund shortfall into higher assessments on banks, which is why the ratio matters to every insured institution’s expense line rather than only to the FDIC. The coverage mechanics themselves are covered in the guide to FDIC deposit insurance.
Estimated insured deposits is the denominator, and it moves for reasons unrelated to fund health. A quarter in which uninsured balances shift into insured products changes the ratio without any change in the fund. Read the numerator and denominator separately.
Why the Numbers Change After Publication
This is the trap that catches people building series off the QBP.
Banks amend call reports after filing, sometimes years later and sometimes under supervisory direction, and each profile is compiled from the FDIC’s database as of its own compilation date. A figure for a given quarter is therefore not guaranteed to be identical across editions, and a series stitched together from several profiles is not the same object as one pulled from a single edition. In practice the differences are usually small in aggregate.
A related effect comes from the reporting forms themselves. When an item is added, discontinued, or redefined, the aggregate series built on it breaks at that boundary, for the reasons covered in the guide to how call report forms change. The QBP notes material definitional changes, but a reader charting a fifteen-year series has to go looking for those notes rather than being warned by the chart.
If you need a reproducible number, cite the QBP edition as well as the quarter. “Industry ROA for Q1 2026, as reported in the Q1 2026 profile” is a citation that survives being checked. “Industry ROA for Q1 2026” is not.
Reading the Community Bank Series Carefully
The FDIC reports community banks separately, and its definition is a research definition rather than an asset threshold. It considers lending and deposit-gathering activity, the geographic scope of operations, and the number and dispersion of offices, alongside size. Institutions specialized enough in their business model are excluded regardless of how small they are.
Two consequences.
The community bank cohort is not “banks under $X billion.” Any comparison against a peer set defined by an asset cutoff will not reconcile to the QBP’s community bank figures, and the gap is not an error in either.
The cohort’s membership changes. Institutions enter and leave as they grow, merge, or change business mix, so a multi-year community bank series is measuring a shifting population. Aggregate growth in the cohort reflects both organic growth and composition change, and the two are not separable from the published figures. This is the same caution that applies to any of our own community banking trend analysis.
Institution Counts Fall for a Boring Reason
The number of insured institutions has declined for decades, and the QBP reports it every quarter. The decline is overwhelmingly consolidation, not failure.
Mergers retire charters continuously. Failures are episodic and, outside crisis periods, rare. In a typical quarter the count falls by dozens of institutions through merger and by zero or one through failure. Anyone reading the declining count as a distress signal is reading a consolidation statistic, and the distinction matters as much here as it does when a charter disappears from a time series.
New charters run the other way and are worth watching separately. De novo formation is a genuine cyclical signal, and it sat near zero for years after 2010 before recovering.
What the QBP Is Good For
It is the authoritative denominator. When you want to say a bank’s NIM is above or below the industry, this is where the industry figure comes from, and using anything else invites a reconciliation argument.
It is also the right framing document for institution-level analysis. A bank whose noncurrent rate rose 40 basis points in a quarter when the industry rose 35 has done something ordinary. The same move against a flat industry is a different observation. The QBP is what turns a bank-level number into a statement.
What it is not is a source of institution-level insight. Everything in it is an aggregate, and every aggregate hides the distribution. The industry can post a healthy average return on assets while a meaningful tail of institutions loses money, and the QBP’s aggregate does not show you that tail.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile?
The Quarterly Banking Profile is the FDIC’s quarterly report aggregating the call report data of FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions into industry-level figures for earnings, asset quality, loan growth, deposits, capital, institution counts, and the Deposit Insurance Fund. It is published about 55 days after the end of each quarter and is the standard source for industry-level U.S. banking statistics.
Does the Quarterly Banking Profile name problem banks?
No. The profile reports the number of institutions on the Problem Bank List and their combined assets but never their identities. A problem bank is an institution with a composite CAMELS rating of 4 or 5, and CAMELS ratings are confidential supervisory information, so individual institutions are not disclosed absent a public enforcement action or a failure.
Why do Quarterly Banking Profile figures change after publication?
Banks amend previously filed call reports, sometimes years later, and each profile is compiled from the FDIC’s database as of its own compilation date, so figures for a given quarter are not guaranteed to be identical across editions. Definitional changes to reporting items can also break an aggregate series at a quarter boundary. Citing the profile edition alongside the quarter makes a figure reproducible.
How does the FDIC define a community bank?
The FDIC uses a research definition rather than a simple asset threshold, considering lending and deposit-gathering activity, the geographic scope of operations, and the number and dispersion of offices in addition to size. Specialized institutions are excluded regardless of size, so the community bank cohort will not reconcile to any peer set defined purely by an asset cutoff.
Why does the number of U.S. banks keep falling?
Almost entirely consolidation. Mergers retire charters continuously, typically dozens per quarter, while failures are episodic and rare outside crisis periods. A declining institution count is a consolidation statistic rather than a distress signal, and new charter formation is the separate series worth watching for cyclical signals.
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