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action the OCC may have imposed (or withdrawn) on the bank.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 can contact the OCC's Communications Division at
202-874-4700 to find out how to get paper-based information or submit a request
through the OCC's online FOIA site,
https://appsec.occ.gov/publicaccesslink/
.
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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