Short answer: A call report is the financial report a bank files with its regulators each quarter: a balance sheet and an income statement, plus the schedules behind them. Banks with a foreign office or $100 billion or more in assets file the FFIEC 031, other banks file the 041, and banks with only domestic offices and less than $5 billion may choose the shorter 051 (FFIEC). Reports are due 30 calendar days after the quarter ends (FDIC), and the FFIEC's Central Data Repository publishes them free. Read the schedules in this order: RC, RI, RC-C, RC-N, RI-B, RC-E, RC-B, RC-R, RC-K, then RC-L, and remember that income is year to date.
What a call report is and which form a bank files
Formally it's the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income, and every national bank, state member bank and insured nonmember bank must file one (FFIEC). It presents the bank and its subsidiaries on a consolidated basis under GAAP (general instructions). Every bank fills in the same lines under the same instructions, which makes it the one set of financials you can line up across banks without translating first.
The FFIEC 031 is for banks with any foreign office or $100 billion or more in total consolidated assets, and the 041 is for banks with only domestic offices and less than $100 billion (FFIEC). A bank with only domestic offices and less than $5 billion, measured each June 30 for the following year, may file the 051 instead, unless it's an advanced approaches or Category III institution or counts as large or highly complex for deposit insurance assessments (FFIEC).
The 051 carries the least detail of the three (FFIEC 051 instructions). It drops Schedules RC-A, RC-D, RC-P, RC-Q, RC-S and RC-V, calls RC-L Off-Balance Sheet Items, and adds Schedule SU, Supplemental Information (FDIC). Some lines also come less often: an 051 filer reports RC-C Part II, Loans to Small Businesses and Small Farms, only as of June 30 and December 31, and details its other noninterest income and expense only in December (FFIEC 051 instructions).
Reports are due 30 calendar days after the quarter ends, and a bank with more than one foreign office, not counting a shell branch or an IBF, gets five more days (FDIC). The June 30 report, for example, is due by July 30 (general instructions).
Where to get call reports for free
The FFIEC's Central Data Repository Public Data Distribution site publishes call reports and UBPRs for most FDIC-insured institutions. One bank's report downloads as a PDF, a semicolon-delimited file or XBRL, and bulk files covering every filer are available beginning 45 calendar days after the report date, either every item for a quarter or a year of balance sheet, income statement and past due data (FFIEC).
Learn the form from one bank's PDF before you open a bulk file, with the line item instructions the FDIC posts schedule by schedule beside it (031 and 041, 051). For ratios instead of lines, the same site has the UBPR, which sets a bank's ratios over five periods beside its peer group average and percentile rank (FFIEC). Our comparison of the call report and the UBPR covers when each one is the better tool.
The order to read the schedules in
Don't read a call report front to back. Start with the balance sheet and earnings, then the loan book and its problems, then funding and securities, then capital. The last two schedules test what the first eight told you.
1. Schedule RC, Balance Sheet
The question is what the bank owns and who pays for it. Other schedules tie to these lines; domestic deposits here must equal the total on RC-E, for example (RC instructions). Look first at how domestic deposits split between noninterest-bearing and interest-bearing, since balances that pay nothing are the cheapest funding a bank has and the slowest to rebuild. Then set securities and net loans against total assets. A bank holding more bonds than loans runs a different business from one that's nearly all loans.
2. Schedule RI, Income Statement
RI answers how the bank makes money and how much it keeps, for the calendar year to date (RI instructions). Below net interest income come provisions for credit losses, noninterest income and expense, and separate lines for realized gains and losses on held-to-maturity and available-for-sale securities. Check those securities lines when a year looks off: a bank that sells low-yielding bonds at a loss to reinvest books the loss there, and it stays in every year-to-date figure through December. The memoranda ask whether a Subchapter S election is in effect, and where a peer set mixes S and C corporations, compare income before applicable income taxes.
3. Schedule RC-C Part I, Loans and Leases
RC-C shows who the bank lends to, sorted by collateral rather than purpose: a loan secured by real estate at origination is a real estate loan whatever it financed (RC-C instructions). A working capital line backed by a mortgage on the borrower's building lands in nonfarm nonresidential real estate, so the commercial and industrial line understates business lending at many community banks. The bank classifies nonfarm nonresidential loans as owner-occupied or other when it books them and doesn't have to revisit the call. The construction and non-owner-occupied lines are where the agencies' CRE concentration screens start (see CRE concentration limits explained).
4. Schedule RC-N, Past Due and Nonaccrual Loans, Leases, and Other Assets
RC-N answers what's going bad and how far along it is. Its columns don't overlap: loans 30 days or more past due but short of 90 and still accruing, loans 90 days or more past due and still accruing, and nonaccrual loans, each at full balance before any allowance, in categories that match RC-C Part I (RC-N instructions). The first column is the early warning, because those loans haven't touched income yet. Read the middle column with the loan mix in mind. A loan 90 days in default belongs on nonaccrual unless it's well secured and in the process of collection, but consumer loans and loans secured by 1-4 family residential property are exempt from that test (RC-N instructions), so a card or mortgage lender can carry real balances there.
5. Schedule RI-B, Charge-offs and Recoveries on Loans and Leases and Changes in Allowances for Credit Losses
RI-B answers what the bank has actually lost and whether the reserve is keeping up. Part I reports charge-offs and recoveries for the year to date by the RC-C loan categories. Part II rolls each allowance forward from the previous December 31, with columns for loans and leases, held-to-maturity securities and available-for-sale securities (RI-B instructions). When net charge-offs run ahead of provisions, the allowance is shrinking, which is fine only if those losses were reserved in earlier periods. Don't expect the provision on RI to match the loan column here. The RI line also includes provisions on securities, on other financial assets carried at amortized cost and on off-balance-sheet credit exposures.
6. Schedule RC-E, Deposit Liabilities
RC-E answers who funds the bank. It splits deposits into transaction and nontransaction accounts and then by depositor, from individuals, partnerships and corporations to states and political subdivisions (RC-E instructions). Two lines deserve a look every quarter. Total brokered deposits, in the memoranda, is funding priced to the market that tends to leave for a better rate. Deposits of states and political subdivisions are public funds, and state law may require the bank to pledge securities to cover the uninsured portion (RC-E instructions). Those pledged bonds turn up again on RC-B.
7. Schedule RC-B, Securities
RC-B answers what the bond portfolio holds and what it's worth. Columns A and B give amortized cost and fair value for held-to-maturity securities, and columns C and D do the same for available-for-sale securities (RC-B instructions). The balance sheet carries the first book at amortized cost and the second at fair value (RC instructions), so when column B sits below column A, that loss appears nowhere in equity. Available-for-sale losses do reduce equity through AOCI, but banks outside the advanced approaches could make a one-time election on the March 31, 2015 call report to keep most AOCI out of regulatory capital (FDIC). Our AOCI benchmarks measure both books bank by bank.
Across the industry, the FDIC put unrealized losses on investment securities at $326.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, 5.5% of amortized cost, an aggregate rather than a typical bank (FDIC). Before calling the portfolio liquidity, subtract the pledged securities reported in the memoranda.
8. Schedule RC-R, Regulatory Capital
Part I, Regulatory Capital Components and Ratios, builds tier 1 capital from equity and reports the leverage ratio. Part II, Risk-Weighted Assets, supports the risk-based ratios. Check first whether the bank has a community bank leverage ratio election in effect, which Part I asks outright. An electing bank completes Part I through the leverage ratio and the framework's qualifying criteria, while other banks complete Parts I and II (RC-R instructions), so an electing bank has no risk-based ratios and gets compared on its leverage ratio. The framework's requirement drops from a leverage ratio above 9% to above 8% on July 1, 2026, so June 30 filings still reflect the old test (FDIC).
9. Schedule RC-K, Quarterly Averages
RC-K shows the balance sheet across the quarter instead of on its last day: averages of daily or Wednesday balances for earning assets and interest-bearing liabilities by type, and for total assets (RC-K instructions). Annualize one quarter's interest income or expense from RI and divide by the matching average for a yield or cost that a quarter-end balance can't give you. Then set RC-K beside RC. A quarter-end balance well above its average came in late, and money that arrives for a report date doesn't always stay. The leverage ratio on RC-R starts from RC-K's average total assets (RC-R instructions).
10. Schedule RC-L, Derivatives and Off-Balance Sheet Items
RC-L, titled Off-Balance Sheet Items on the 051, shows what the bank has promised but not yet funded. Unused commitments are reported gross, including construction draws and home equity and credit card lines, even when the bank can cancel them at any time (RC-L instructions). Find the unused commitments to fund commercial real estate, construction and land development loans. The construction balance on RC-C is only what borrowers have drawn so far, and a half-built project needs the rest of its loan, so size construction exposure from both lines. Standby letters of credit sit here too.
Traps that catch new analysts
Income is year to date. RI covers the calendar year through the report date, so a single quarter is this quarter's year-to-date figure minus the prior quarter's (RI instructions). Only in March are the two the same. Annualize by the months covered, which means doubling a June figure, not multiplying it by four.
Dollar amounts are in thousands. Banks under $10 billion must report in thousands, and larger banks may round to the nearest million (general instructions). Forget the multiplier and every balance reads a thousand times too small. Rounding also means details won't always add to their totals.
The 051 has fewer lines. Mix 041 and 051 filers in a peer set and you'll hit blanks where the 051 has no line or reports only at midyear or year-end. Don't treat a blank as a zero.
History changes. A bank's primary federal supervisor can require an amended report when a filing has significant errors (general instructions), and the CDR regenerates its bulk files monthly to capture amendments (FFIEC). A figure pulled in August may not match the same field pulled in November, so date every download that feeds a board package.
A merger breaks the trend. In the year of an acquisition, RI includes the acquired business's income only from the acquisition date (RI instructions) and RI-B its charge-offs only after it (RI-B instructions). RC-K counts the acquired balances from that date but divides by every day of the quarter (RC-K instructions), while the quarter-end balance sheet carries all of them. Any ratio that sets year-to-date income against a balance is distorted that year, in a direction that depends on the closing date, and for the next four quarters year-over-year growth includes whatever was bought.
The call report is the bank, not the holding company. It consolidates the bank and its own subsidiaries (general instructions), while bank and savings and loan holding companies with $3 billion or more in total consolidated assets file the Federal Reserve's FR Y-9C, Consolidated Financial Statements for Holding Companies (Federal Reserve). A listed bank's earnings release usually describes the holding company, so its return on equity won't necessarily match the call report of the bank underneath.
Common ratios and the schedules behind them
Of these, only the tier 1 leverage ratio is printed on the call report itself, on RC-R Part I. You build the rest, and each name links to our benchmark for it.
| Ratio | Numerator and denominator | Schedules |
|---|---|---|
| Return on assets | Year-to-date net income, annualized, over average total assets | RI; RC or RC-K |
| Return on equity | Year-to-date net income, annualized, over average total equity capital | RI; RC |
| Net interest margin | Year-to-date net interest income, annualized, over average earning assets | RI; RC-K or RC |
| Efficiency ratio | Noninterest expense over net interest income plus noninterest income | RI |
| Nonperforming loan ratio | Nonaccrual loans plus loans 90 days or more past due and still accruing, over total loans and leases | RC-N; RC-C Part I |
| Loan-to-deposit ratio | Loans and leases held for investment, net of the allowance, over total deposits at quarter end | RC |
| Tier 1 leverage ratio | Tier 1 capital over average total consolidated assets, after deductions | RC-R Part I; RC-K |
Source: FFIEC 031 and 041 line item instructions, as posted by the FDIC. Definitions match our benchmark articles; other sources may average balances differently.
Two choices move these ratios more than people expect. One is the average: quarter-end balances from RC or averages from RC-K, which won't match. The other is the loan figure, gross or net of the allowance, with or without loans held for sale. Either is defensible if every bank in the comparison gets the same one.
Compare a quarter with the same quarter a year earlier
Year-to-date income is one reason. A March ratio stands on three months and a June ratio on six, a bad first quarter weighs on every later filing that year, and only December covers the full year, so a June ratio belongs beside last June's. The calendar is the other reason. Public funds swell and drain with tax collections and farm deposits follow the harvest, and last June's balance sheet had the same seasons in it.
When one quarter matters on its own, such as a turn in the margin, isolate it by subtraction and set it against the same quarter a year before. The Call report tab on the sample scorecard for Frost Bank is built for this: its balance sheet and income statement run line by line beside a year-ago column, and every ratio is ranked within Frost's FFIEC peer group.
Frequently asked questions
What is a bank call report?
A call report, formally the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income, is the financial report every national bank, state member bank and insured nonmember bank must file with its regulator each quarter. It holds a balance sheet and an income statement, plus schedules on loans, past due and nonaccrual loans, charge-offs, deposits, securities, regulatory capital and off-balance-sheet items.
Where can I find a bank's call report for free?
On the FFIEC's Central Data Repository Public Data Distribution site, which publishes call reports and UBPRs for most FDIC-insured institutions. One bank's report downloads as a PDF, a semicolon-delimited file or XBRL, and bulk files covering every filer are available beginning 45 calendar days after the report date.
What is the difference between the FFIEC 031, 041 and 051?
They are versions of the same report for different banks. The FFIEC's instructions put banks with any foreign office or $100 billion or more in total consolidated assets on the 031, and banks with only domestic offices and less than $100 billion on the 041. Banks with only domestic offices and less than $5 billion may choose the 051, which has the least detail of the three and reports some items only at midyear or year-end.
When are call reports due?
The instructions require a call report to reach the FFIEC's Central Data Repository within 30 calendar days after the report date, so a June 30 report is due by July 30. A bank with more than one foreign office, other than a shell branch or an IBF, gets five more days to file.
Are call report income numbers quarterly or year to date?
Year to date. Schedule RI covers the calendar year through the report date, so a June 30 filing reports income for January through June. For a single quarter, subtract the prior quarter's year-to-date figure. To annualize, scale by the months covered, which means doubling a June figure.
Where these facts come from
Form, schedule and deadline details come from the call report instructions the FDIC posts for the FFIEC 031, 041 and 051, the FFIEC's Central Data Repository, the Federal Reserve's FR Y-9C page and the FDIC's Quarterly Banking Profile, each linked where it's used. You can see a real bank's call report line by line, with every ratio ranked against its FFIEC peer group, on the sample scorecard for Frost Bank. Plans that cover your state or every bank start at $29 a month (pricing).