Public Information
How to Find Public Information on the Web about Individual Banks
One way to get public information about an individual bank is to go to a Web site
maintained by a federal bank regulator: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
(national banks), the Federal Reserve Board (state chartered banks that are members of the
Federal Reserve System and bank holding companies)
and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (insured
state banks that are not members of the Federal Reserve System). These agencies maintain
records about the banks they supervise. If you want to find out about a financial
institution that is not a bank, you can visit the Web site maintained by the Office of Thrift Supervision (savings and loans) or
the National Credit Union Administration (credit unions).
If the bank you're interested in is a national bank, you are already at the right site.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) maintains a variety of public
information about the national banking system. If you do a search about the bank you're
researching you may find a list of OCC documents in which your bank is mentioned.
Documents can include, for example, a corporate application filed by your bank to merge
with another bank or to engage in an innovative activity. You'll also find evaluations of
your bank's performance under the Community Reinvestment Act
(CRA), or information about an enforcement action the OCC may
have imposed (or withdrawn) on the bank. Since much of the public information about a
national bank is not available electronically, you also can contact the OCC's Communications Division to find out how to get
paper-based information.
If you don't know which federal agency is the primary regulator of the bank you're
interested in, you can go the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Web site and
click on the Institution Directory.
Enter the name of the bank and you will get a list of likely matches (many banks have
similar names). The FDIC is also a good source to get statistical information about
individual banks, including national banks. For example, you can get demographic data and
financial profiles derived from quarterly reports filed with federal regulators. The
Federal Reserve Board's National
Information Center of Banking Information also may be useful, because it has balance
sheet and income information about banks and bank holding companies.
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