Call report vs UBPR: what's the difference?

One filing, two ways to read it

National banks, state member banks, insured state nonmember banks and savings associations all file a call report as of the close of business on the last calendar day of each quarter, according to the call report's general instructions. The form depends on the bank. The FFIEC 031 is for a bank with any foreign office or with $100 billion or more in total consolidated assets, the 041 is for a domestic bank under $100 billion, and the shorter 051 is an option for a domestic bank under $5 billion (FFIEC 051 instructions). The filing is due 30 calendar days after quarter end, as an FDIC financial institution letter reminds banks. What arrives is the bank's books in a fixed regulatory format: Schedule RC is the balance sheet, Schedule RI the income statement, and the rest of the schedules break those two down, from RC-C (loans and leases) to RC-R (regulatory capital).

The UBPR is what the FFIEC does with that filing. It produces one each quarter for every commercial and savings bank that files a call report, and its UBPR page calls the report a tool for supervisory, examination and management purposes. The Central Data Repository's description fills in the rest: a multi-page analysis organized by subject, from earnings and the balance sheet to asset quality, liquidity and capital, with nearly every figure in it (dollar values and ratios, peer averages and percentile ranks) computed from the call report. The bank doesn't prepare its UBPR, and the CDR ties the UBPR's availability directly to the call report's.

If you haven't worked with a UBPR before, our plain definition and short walkthrough cover what's on the pages.

The two reports side by side

Sources: call report general instructions and schedule list published by the FDIC; the FFIEC's UBPR and peer group average pages; the Central Data Repository's site description and bulk data page.

When the call report is the right tool

The usual reason to open the call report is a ratio that moved. The UBPR will show the margin slipped, and its Asset Yields and Funding Costs page points you to the side it slipped on. The call report gives you the dollars underneath: Schedule RI breaks out interest income and interest expense line by line, and RC-K gives the quarterly average balances behind them. Keep in mind that RI is reported calendar year to date, so a June filing carries income from January through June (FDIC instructions for Schedule RI). Set it next to the March filing and an ordinary second quarter looks like a record. Subtract the March figures to get the quarter on its own.

Measures you define yourself need it too. Take concentration screens. The 2006 interagency CRE guidance flags a bank when construction, land development and other land loans reach 100% of total capital, or when non-owner-occupied CRE reaches 300% of total capital and the CRE book has grown 50% or more over the prior 36 months. Banks using the community bank leverage ratio framework don't report tier 2 capital, so since the first quarter of 2020 the agencies have accepted tier 1 capital plus the allowance as the denominator (OCC bulletin). When your board's limit uses a definition of its own, say a narrower CRE category or a different capital base, you assemble the ratio from the loan categories in RC-C Part I and the capital figures in RC-R Part I, for your bank and for every peer you set beside it. Our guide to CRE concentration limits covers the screens in detail.

Reconciliation starts there as well, because everything downstream is built from the filing. Dollar amounts are reported in thousands, and a bank with $10 billion or more in assets may round them to the nearest million; the general instructions accept that rounding can leave details that don't add up to their stated totals. Then check the dates. A bank's primary federal regulator can require an amended call report when the original contains significant errors, according to the same instructions. The CDR regenerates its bulk call report files monthly to capture amendments, and it updates UBPR data daily for the latest quarter and weekly for the five most recent, which it says gets amendments into the UBPR within a week or less (CDR). A ratio pasted into last month's board package can differ from the same ratio pulled today, with both correct on the day they were pulled.

Diligence on one book of loans needs the filing too. If you're buying a participation or pricing an acquisition, a percentage isn't enough; you need balances. Look to RC-C Part I for balances by loan category, RC-N for past due and nonaccrual loans, RI-B for charge-offs and recoveries, and RC-C Part II if the book is small business or small farm lending (FDIC schedule list). Read RC-N with the definition in hand. A loan belongs in nonaccrual if it's kept on a cash basis because the borrower's condition has deteriorated, if full payment of principal or interest isn't expected, or if it has been in default 90 days or more, unless it's both well secured and in the process of collection (RC-N instructions).

When the UBPR is the right tool

The UBPR is the better tool when you want your ratios the way your supervisors will see them. The FFIEC built it for supervisory and examination use, and it runs one calculation for every bank, so nobody argues about whose definition went into a ratio. When a figure in an exam discussion doesn't match your internal package, the UBPR is the first place to check.

It's also where peer position lives. Each ratio sits beside the average for the bank's FFIEC peer group and the bank's percentile rank, which places it against every other bank in that group, as the FFIEC's peer group average report page explains. The averages are trimmed: for each ratio, banks above the 95th percentile and below the 5th are removed before averaging. That stops the extremes from setting the average. It also means the banks inside the average change from one ratio to the next, which is why the FFIEC says averages for different ratios can't be combined. Subtract one peer average from another to back into a spread and the answer describes no actual group of banks. Before you quote a peer average to a board, pull the List of Banks in Peer Group report from the CDR and read the names.

For a first read on a bank you don't know, start with the UBPR. Five periods sit on each report, so the trend is there before you've built anything. The UBPR User's Guide on the CDR lists the pages, starting with Summary Ratios, and they include a QTR Income Statement and a One Quarter Annualized Income Analysis, which spare you the year-to-date subtraction. For a correspondent's first credit look at a bank, or a director's reading before a peer discussion, that is usually enough.

Where each report runs out

The UBPR's peer group isn't yours to choose, and the FFIEC does redraw the groups. In an announcement dated February 13, 2026, it said that from February 26, 2026, commercial banks with average assets up to $300 million would be grouped by asset size alone, without regard to office count or metro location (UBPR updates). That cut the commercial bank peer groups from 17 to 8. The new groups were applied to Q4 2024 through Q4 2025 first and then to older quarters. For a commercial bank of that size, UBPR pages saved before the change can carry peer averages built from a different set of banks than a fresh download of the same quarter. Our explainer on how FFIEC peer groups work lists the current groups.

When the assigned group can't answer the question, the FFIEC publishes a free custom peer group report. Our guide to building a bank peer group covers which banks belong in one.

A UBPR also covers one bank. The CDR describes it as an analysis of a commercial or savings bank and serves reports through its Institution Reports menu. Its bulk data page does offer UBPR Ratio, Rank and Stats files for all commercial banks, but turning those into a table of the competitors your board asks about is a spreadsheet project.

The call report's limits run the other way. It carries no peer data, and outside the capital ratios in RC-R Part I the ratio work is yours. The forms also differ: the 051 leaves out Schedules RC-A, RC-D, RC-P, RC-Q, RC-S and RC-V and adds Schedule SU (051 instructions), so a peer set that mixes 041 and 051 filers has gaps in trading, mortgage banking, fair value and securitization detail.

Neither report is instant. Individual call reports post to the CDR once they've been accepted and prepared for publication, according to the general instructions, and UBPR data are computed after the call report is processed and validated. The filing deadline is 30 calendar days after quarter end, with five more days for a bank with more than one foreign office (FDIC letter), and bulk call report files follow 45 calendar days after the report date. Before the deadline passes, a peer comparison built from individual filings rests on whichever banks have filed so far.

Where a peer scorecard fits

The UBPR costs nothing and it's the reference examiners use. If you need one bank's peer position once a quarter, it will do the job, and nothing we sell replaces it.

A peer scorecard such as BankingLens does the assembly between the two reports. We compute every bank's ratios from its call report following UBPR definitions and check them against the regulator's published UBPR figures (methodology). Each ratio is ranked within the bank's FFIEC peer group. The scorecard pairs those percentile ranks and ratio trends with a plain-English summary of what the filing says and with the call report itself, balance sheet and income statement line by line beside a year-ago column. A watchlist keeps the banks you follow in one place, so tracking several competitors doesn't mean several downloads. The sample scorecard for Frost Bank, Call report tab included, is public and needs no sign-up.

The trade-off is history. UBPR data on the CDR go back to December 2002, while our Starter plan carries 4 quarters and Pro carries 9 (pricing). For a trend longer than that, the UBPR is where to get it.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• What is a UBPR?
• How to read a UBPR
• How to read a bank call report
• How FFIEC peer groups work
• Bank peer benchmarking tools compared