Call Reports: the quarterly form every bank files

What the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income are

Two different documents describe what a person usually calls “the bank”, and they are filed with two different bodies. One is the annual or quarterly report filed with the securities regulator by the company whose shares trade; its shape is set out in the piece on what a 10-K contains. The other is the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income, known universally as the Call Report, and it is filed by the chartered, insured bank itself.

The difference matters because the second one has nothing to do with having shareholders. A bank with no listed stock files it. A bank whose parent is listed files it, and its parent separately files with the securities regulator. The obligation follows the insured charter, not the capital structure.

The statute: four reports a year

The requirement is statutory, and it is specific about the count. Title 12 of the United States Code provides that “Each insured depository institution shall make to the appropriate Federal banking agency 4 reports of condition annually”. [1]

UNITED STATES CODE · TITLE 12 · 12 U.S.C. § 1817 · law.cornell.edu

Two words in that sentence carry most of the weight. “Each” makes the duty universal among insured depository institutions, and “4” makes the frequency a matter of law rather than of practice. That is the reason a bank’s balance-sheet figures move on a quarterly rhythm in the public registers: the underlying filing arrives four times a year because the statute says four.

Who picks the dates

The institution does not choose when its own snapshot is taken. The same section provides that the reports are made “upon dates which shall be selected by the Chairman of the Board of Directors, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System”.

UNITED STATES CODE · TITLE 12 · 12 U.S.C. § 1817 · law.cornell.edu

Three named officers, one set of dates, every institution. That is what makes the resulting data comparable at all: figures reported as of a common date can be lined up, whereas figures as of whatever date each bank preferred could not be. It is also why every number this publication quotes from a register carries the report date it was filed against, rather than the date somebody read it.

The regulation restates it for every insured institution

Below the statute, the FDIC’s own regulation states the filing obligation in plain terms: “every insured depository institution is required to file Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income”. [2]

CODE OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS · 12 CFR 304.3 · law.cornell.edu

The general instructions to the form say the same thing from the other end, by listing the charter types it covers: “Every national bank, state member bank, insured state nonmember bank, and savings association is required to file a consolidated Call Report”. [4]

FFIEC 031 AND 041 GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS · 2024 · 031-041-624-general-instructions.pdf · fdic.gov

The enumeration crosses the charter categories rather than following them. A nationally chartered bank, a state-chartered bank that is a member of the Federal Reserve System, a state-chartered bank that is not, and a savings association all appear in the same sentence with the same duty. Which body granted the charter and which body supervises the institution change a great deal, as the piece on how the corporation is organized sets out, but they do not change whether the Call Report is filed.

Three versions of the form

The form is not a single document. Three versions exist, and they are identified by number: FFIEC 031, FFIEC 041 and FFIEC 051. [3]

FDIC CALL REPORT FORMS AND INSTRUCTIONS · CURRENT QUARTER · fdic.gov

Which one an institution uses is decided by a test in the general instructions, and the order of that test is the part most often reported wrongly. It does not begin with size. The instructions describe “the report form for banks with foreign offices or with total consolidated assets of $100 billion or more (FFIEC 031) having more detail than the report form for banks with domestic offices only and total consolidated assets of less than $100 billion”.

FFIEC 031 AND 041 GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS · 2024 · 031-041-624-general-instructions.pdf · fdic.gov

Foreign offices come first in that sentence, and the dollar figure second. A bank with foreign offices is described by the first branch of the test whatever its total assets are. Reducing the choice to “big banks file the long form” inverts the order the instructions themselves use.

FFIEC 031 AND 041 GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS · 2024 · fdic.gov — FDIC CALL REPORT FORMS AND INSTRUCTIONS · fdic.gov

The third row of that table is deliberately short. A version exists and is named; a threshold for it was not read at a primary source, so none is printed. Leaving the cell honest is cheaper than filling it from memory and being wrong in a table that looks authoritative.

Which version this bank files

The answer for a particular institution does not have to be deduced from the test at all. It is a field in the FDIC register, and for certificate 12437 it reports the FFIEC 041: the field for the Call Report form returns 41, and the separate flag for the 031 returns zero. [5]

FDIC INSTITUTION REGISTER · READ 22 SEP 2026 · CALLFORM: 41 · FORM31: 0 · api.fdic.gov

This is a small lesson with a wide application. An earlier draft of this dossier recorded that the form version could not be named, on the grounds that no primary source for the thresholds had been read. Both halves turned out to be reachable: the thresholds are in the general instructions, and the answer for the institution was a field in the register the dossier was already querying. “No source was read” and “no source exists” are different sentences, and the first one has to be re-tested before it turns into the second.

From the form to the register

The filed report does not stay a form. Its figures are what the public registers publish, which is why a balance-sheet number about a bank can be read without ever opening a Call Report. The same institution appears in two numbering systems while this happens: it is identified in the Federal Reserve’s system by RSSD 749242 and in the FDIC’s by certificate 12437 — one institution, two keys.

FDIC INSTITUTION REGISTER · READ 22 SEP 2026 · FED_RSSD: 749242 · CERT 12437 · api.fdic.gov

Not everything published about a bank comes from this form. Office counts and deposits broken down by branch come from an annual survey with its own as-of date and its own instructions, and that survey is the subject of the piece on the FDIC Summary of Deposits. Mixing a quarterly figure with an annual one, or either with a live register read on some third date, is the most ordinary way to publish a wrong number while citing a real source for it.

Reading the register rather than the form

A register figure is only meaningful with the report date attached, and the register attaches it. For certificate 12437 the record carries assets of $26,986,725 thousand and deposits of $22,166,216 thousand as of June 30, 2026 — the register states its amounts in thousands, and June 30 is the report date the figures belong to, not the date the record was read.

FDIC INSTITUTION REGISTER · REPDTE 30 JUN 2026 · ASSET: 26,986,725 · DEP: 22,166,216 · api.fdic.gov

Beside those moving figures the same record keeps two that do not move. The institution’s establishment date is February 27, 1904, and its deposits have been federally insured since January 1, 1934.

FDIC INSTITUTION REGISTER · READ 22 SEP 2026 · ESTYMD: 02/27/1904 · INSDATE: 01/01/1934 · api.fdic.gov

Both kinds of field live in one record, and telling them apart is part of reading it. A field with a report date is a snapshot and expires; a field with an establishment or insurance date is a historical fact and does not. This publication re-checks the first kind quarterly and the second kind far less often, and prints the verification date on every page so that the distinction is visible rather than assumed.

What is not built from these figures

No ratio appears on this page. No trend, no comparison between institutions, and no characterization of any figure as high, low, rising or falling in any meaningful sense. A deposit total and an asset total as of one report date are two facts; dividing one by the other would be an analysis this publication does not perform, and describing either as healthy would be a judgment it does not make.

Nor is the form version presented as a consequence of size alone. The instructions put the foreign-office question ahead of the dollar figure, and this page follows that order because the source does. What is left is a short, checkable chain: a statute that requires four reports a year, three named officers who pick the dates, a regulation and a set of instructions that say who files, three numbered versions of the form, one register field that names the version for this institution, and two dated figures that came out the other end. Every link in it is listed again in the source register, and the terms are defined in the glossary.

Charterbend does not provide investment advice. It does not rate, recommend or value any security or institution, and nothing here is an offer or a solicitation to buy or sell anything.