What Is a Bank Call Report? A Complete Guide

Every FDIC-insured bank in the United States files a call report every quarter. It is one of the most comprehensive financial documents in existence — and most people outside of banking have never heard of it.

If you work in banking, finance, compliance, or investment analysis, understanding call reports is foundational. This guide explains exactly what a call report is, what data it contains, and how professionals use it to evaluate bank performance, risk, and regulatory standing.

What Is a Bank Call Report?

A bank call report — formally known as the Report of Condition and Income — is a quarterly financial filing that every national bank, state member bank, and insured nonmember bank must submit to its primary federal regulator.

The "call" in call report dates back to the 19th century, when bank examiners would literally call on banks and demand a statement of their financial condition on the spot. Today the process is standardized and electronic, but the name stuck.

Call reports are submitted to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) Central Data Repository (CDR) within 30 days of each quarter-end. The four reporting dates are:

• March 31 (Q1)
• June 30 (Q2)
• September 30 (Q3)
• December 31 (Q4)

Every FDIC-insured institution is required to file. That means approximately 4,500+ banks submit call report data four times per year — making it the largest standardized dataset of bank financial information in the world.

Who Files a Call Report?

All FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings banks file call reports. Specifically:

• National banks — supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)
• State member banks — supervised by the Federal Reserve
• Insured nonmember banks — supervised by the FDIC

Credit unions file a similar but separate report called the NCUA 5300 Call Report, submitted to the National Credit Union Administration.

Bank holding companies file a separate Y-series report with the Federal Reserve. Call reports focus specifically on the depository institution — the bank itself.

What Data Is Inside a Call Report?

A call report is not a single document — it is a collection of detailed schedules covering every aspect of a bank's financial position. The main components include:

Balance Sheet (Schedule RC)

The balance sheet summarizes a bank's assets, liabilities, and equity capital at the end of the quarter. Key line items include:

• Total loans and leases
• Total securities (held-to-maturity and available-for-sale)
• Cash and balances due from depository institutions
• Federal funds sold
• Total deposits
• Borrowed funds
• Tier 1 and Total Capital

Income Statement (Schedule RI)

The income statement covers revenues and expenses for the quarter and year-to-date. Key items include:

• Net interest income
• Noninterest income (fees, service charges, trading gains)
• Provision for loan losses
• Noninterest expense
• Net income

Loan Portfolio Detail (Schedule RC-C)

One of the most granular schedules in the call report, RC-C breaks down the loan portfolio by type:

• Commercial and Industrial (C&I) loans
• Commercial Real Estate (CRE) — owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied
• Construction and Development
• 1-4 Family Residential Mortgages
• Multifamily Residential
• Consumer loans (auto, credit card, student)
• Agricultural loans

This level of detail allows analysts to assess concentration risk, portfolio composition, and exposure to specific loan categories.

Past Due and Nonaccrual Loans (Schedule RC-N)

This schedule tracks loan quality — how many loans are 30–89 days past due, 90+ days past due, or on nonaccrual status. It is one of the most closely watched sections for identifying emerging credit stress.

Capital (Schedule RC-R)

The capital schedule reports regulatory capital ratios including:

• Tier 1 Leverage Ratio
• Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) Ratio
• Tier 1 Risk-Based Capital Ratio
• Total Risk-Based Capital Ratio

These ratios determine whether a bank is "well-capitalized," "adequately capitalized," or in need of regulatory attention.

Deposit Detail (Schedule RC-E)

Breaks down deposits by type — demand deposits, savings, time deposits (CDs), brokered deposits, and deposits from foreign offices. Useful for analyzing a bank's funding stability and cost of funds.

Why Call Reports Matter

Call reports are the foundation of bank financial analysis. Because every bank files using the same standardized format, the data is directly comparable across institutions regardless of size, geography, or charter type.

For bank executives and management teams, call reports provide benchmarking data. How does your net interest margin compare to peer banks of similar size? Is your CRE concentration higher or lower than competitors in your market? The UBPR (Uniform Bank Performance Report), derived entirely from call report data, is the primary tool for this type of peer analysis.

For regulators and examiners, call reports are the early warning system for the entire banking system. Rising delinquencies, declining capital ratios, or rapid loan growth in a specific portfolio can trigger heightened supervisory attention before a problem becomes a crisis.

For analysts and investors, call reports provide the most granular publicly-available financial data on any U.S. bank — far more detailed than the 10-Q or 10-K filings that publicly traded bank holding companies file with the SEC. An analyst looking at a regional bank's CRE exposure can see the exact breakdown by loan type, maturity, and delinquency status.

For vendors and consultants serving the banking industry, call report data reveals which banks are growing, which are stressed, and where opportunities exist for products and services.

How Often Is Call Report Data Updated?

Call report data is typically available within 30–45 days after each quarter-end. The FFIEC CDR publishes individual institution data within approximately 6 hours of each bank's submission.

Bulk data files — containing every reporting institution for a given quarter — become available about 45 days after the report date.

How to Access and Analyze Call Report Data

Call report data is publicly available through several channels:

FFIEC Central Data Repository (CDR) at cdr.ffiec.gov — the official source. Free to access but requires manual navigation and offers limited visualization.

FDIC BankFind Suite at banks.data.fdic.gov — provides a more accessible interface and API for querying call report data.

BankRegReports — our platform aggregates and visualizes call report and UBPR data for all U.S. banks since 2001, with peer benchmarking, custom screening, Sentry Alerts, and CSV export. Start for free — no credit card required.

The challenge with raw call report data is scale. A single quarter's bulk file contains hundreds of data fields across thousands of institutions. Purpose-built analytics tools transform that complexity into actionable intelligence — showing you trend charts, peer comparisons, and threshold alerts without requiring you to manipulate massive datasets manually.

Key Call Report Metrics to Know

If you are new to call report analysis, these are the metrics most analysts track first:

Each of these is derived directly from call report schedules and reported in standardized form in the UBPR for easy peer comparison.

Call Reports vs. Other Bank Financial Filings

It is worth distinguishing call reports from the other financial documents banks and bank holding companies produce:

Call Report vs. 10-Q / 10-K — Public bank holding companies file quarterly 10-Qs and annual 10-Ks with the SEC. These are GAAP-based statements covering the consolidated holding company. Call reports cover the depository institution specifically, use regulatory accounting rather than GAAP in some cases, and are far more granular on loan portfolio composition.

Call Report vs. UBPR — The UBPR (Uniform Bank Performance Report) is not a filing — it is an analytical report generated by the FFIEC from call report data. It presents ratios, trends, and peer group comparisons in a standardized format. Think of the call report as the raw data and the UBPR as one pre-built view of it.

Call Report vs. Y-Series Reports — Bank holding companies file Y-9C and other Y-series reports with the Federal Reserve. These cover the consolidated holding company rather than the individual bank charter.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many banks file call reports? Approximately 4,500 FDIC-insured institutions currently file quarterly call reports, down from nearly 14,000 in the early 1990s due to decades of consolidation.

Are call reports public? Yes. Call report data is publicly available and free to access through the FFIEC Central Data Repository and the FDIC BankFind Suite.

How far back does call report data go? Electronic call report data is available back to the early 1990s. BankRegReports provides call report and UBPR data going back to Q4 2001 — over 24 years of quarterly history for every U.S. bank.

What is the difference between a call report and a UBPR? The call report is the raw financial filing submitted by each bank. The UBPR is an analytical report generated from call report data that adds peer comparisons and ratio calculations. Both are available through BankRegReports.

Do credit unions file call reports? No. Credit unions file the NCUA 5300 Call Report with the National Credit Union Administration. The FFIEC call report applies specifically to FDIC-insured banks.

What is a call report used for? Call reports are used by bank regulators to monitor financial health, by bank executives for peer benchmarking, by analysts and investors to evaluate credit risk and performance, and by vendors and consultants to identify market opportunities within the banking sector.

Start Analyzing Call Report Data

Call report data is one of the most powerful and underutilized datasets in finance. Whether you're a bank executive benchmarking your performance, an analyst evaluating credit risk, or a consultant identifying market opportunities, the data is available — the challenge is making sense of it efficiently.

BankRegReports makes call report and UBPR analysis accessible to every financial professional, with 24+ years of data for all U.S. banks, real-time peer benchmarking, and Sentry Alerts for threshold monitoring.

Start for free — no credit card required →