Appendix ] — Data Card — Call Reports (FFIEC)

Provider & what it is

A Call Report — formally the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income, regulatory forms FFIEC 031 / 041 / 051 — is the quarterly financial statement that essentially every U.S. commercial bank and savings institution must file with its federal regulator. They are collected through the FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) and published free on the FFIEC Central Data Repository (CDR) Public Data Distribution site. Here is the reveal: a Call Report is a bank’s balance sheet and income statement, but the line items are standardized across all banks and identified by codes (the “MDRM” / RCFD–RCON series), so you can stack ten thousand banks into one comparable panel — something free narrative filings cannot give you. This is the raw material of bank-level empirical work: deposits, loans by type, charge-offs, net interest income, capital ratios — every quarter, for the whole banking system, going back decades. The form numbers reflect bank size and foreign offices (031 = with foreign offices, 041 = domestic only, 051 = streamlined for smaller banks).

Coverage

All FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions, filed quarterly (as of March 31, June 30, September 30, December 31). The CDR bulk download covers the modern electronic era; historical Call Report data reaches back much further through the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s long-running archive and the FFIEC. [CHECK: the earliest quarter available in the CDR bulk “Call Reports — Single Period” download vs. the Chicago Fed historical files.] This is entity- level data — one set of figures per bank per quarter — not branch-level and not loan-level.

Key identifiers

The primary key is the RSSD ID (often IDRSSD in the data files) — the Federal Reserve’s permanent, unique identifier for a financial institution in the National Information Center (NIC). It is permanent across name changes and is the join key to other regulatory data (FR Y-9C, NIC attributes, the Fed’s structure files). Beware the trap: a bank’s RSSD ID is not the same as its parent holding company’s RSSD ID — relating a subsidiary bank to its holding company is exactly the crosswalk the FR Y-9C card and Chapter 7.4 handle, and it is out of scope here. Individual financial line items are identified by MDRM codes — e.g. RCFD2170 (total assets, consolidated) or RCON2170 (total assets, domestic offices); the RCFD/RCON prefix tells you consolidated vs. domestic-only.

Access path (download / API; no key required)

Call Reports are free and need no API key. Two paths:

import os, io, zipfile, requests, pandas as pd

# Path A — FFIEC CDR bulk download (manual or scripted): the "Call Reports -- Single Period"
# tab-delimited ZIP for a given quarter, pulled from the CDR Public Data Distribution site.
# Save the raw ZIP to data/raw/ and read the period you need.
# url = "<FFIEC CDR bulk-download URL for 2024-12-31>"   # [CHECK exact CDR endpoint/params]
raw = "data/raw/ffiec_call_2024Q4.zip"
with zipfile.ZipFile(raw) as z:
    name = [n for n in z.namelist() if "Schedule RC" in n][0]   # pick the schedule you need
    rc = pd.read_csv(z.open(name), sep="\t", low_memory=False)

# Path B — the FFIEC CDR also exposes a SOAP/web-service API for programmatic pulls
# (it issues a free access token/credential you read from the environment, never hard-coded):
token = os.environ["FFIEC_CDR_TOKEN"]   # export FFIEC_CDR_TOKEN=...   [CHECK exact auth scheme]

For a camp project the bulk ZIP per quarter is simpler and entirely sufficient; cache the raw ZIP and read from disk. The SOAP web service exists for automated, large-scale pulls; its exact endpoint and auth are version-dependent, so verify before relying on it.

License & GMU-infra note (§5)

Free and public U.S. government regulatory data — no GMU-infrastructure restriction. Unlike the WRDS-licensed sources in this appendix, you may pull Call Reports on any machine, cache them, and commit the cached raw files to git. Apply the CONVENTIONS §5 discipline uniformly anyway — pin the reporting quarter, cache the raw ZIP to data/raw/, and log the pull in logs/pulls.jsonl with a content hash — purely for reproducibility, not because a license demands it. If you script the CDR web service, keep its access token in an env var (§5: it is a credential), never in code.

Gotchas

MDRM codes drift over time. Line items are added, retired, and renumbered across years as reporting requirements change; a single MDRM code does not always mean the same thing back through history. Build series from the FFIEC’s MDRM dictionary, do not assume code stability.
RCFD vs. RCON. Consolidated (RCFD…) and domestic-only (RCON…) versions of the “same” item differ for banks with foreign offices. Choosing the wrong prefix silently mismeasures large banks.
Bank ≠ holding company. Summing subsidiary-bank Call Reports does not equal the parent’s FR Y-9C; the consolidation rules differ. Do not mix the two levels without the crosswalk.
Restatements and late filings. Banks amend filings; a quarter pulled today can differ from the same quarter pulled later. Pin and log the pull date as well as the reporting quarter.
Mergers create discontinuities. When banks merge, an RSSD disappears or absorbs another’s balances — a jump in a single bank’s series is often a merger, not organic growth.

“First 10 rows” schema sketch — selected items, one quarter (illustrative — not real data)

IDRSSD	RCFD2170	RCFD2122	RCON2200	RIAD4340	report_date
100001	9852341	6120448	7421005	23110	2024-12-31
100002	41200	28055	34880	290	2024-12-31
100003	1503882	980221	1190440	4120	2024-12-31
100004	287990	175004	230118	905	2024-12-31
100005	65432100	40221890	49880221	188400	2024-12-31
100006	12044	7880	9905	41	2024-12-31
100007	880221	540118	690004	2110	2024-12-31
100008	3201998	2010554	2540118	8800	2024-12-31
100009	158002	99110	124880	480	2024-12-31
100010	22118994	13880221	17004118	61200	2024-12-31

(RSSD IDs and dollar amounts in $thousands are fabricated for shape illustration only. RCFD2170 = total assets, RCFD2122 = total loans & leases, RCON2200 = total deposits, RIAD4340 = net income — code meanings illustrative.)

Which chapter / lab uses it

Catalogued in Appendix C as a free bank-regulation source. It is the entity-level data layer for any Week-7/Week-8 capstone on bank regulation, bank risk, deposit behavior, or lending — a Maya-style (household-finance/fair-lending) or Priya-style (climate-risk-on-bank-balance-sheets) extension — and it pairs naturally with HMDA (lending) and the FR Y-9C (holding-company level). Pull it the §5 way for reproducibility: pin the quarter, cache the raw ZIP, log the hash.

# Data Card — Call Reports (FFIEC) ## Provider & what it is A **Call Report** — formally the *Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income*, regulatory forms **FFIEC 031 / 041 / 051** — is the quarterly financial statement that essentially every U.S. commercial bank and savings institution must file with its federal regulator. They are collected through the **FFIEC** (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) and published free on the **FFIEC Central Data Repository (CDR)** Public Data Distribution site. Here is the reveal: a Call Report is a bank's balance sheet and income statement, but the line items are *standardized across all banks* and identified by codes (the "MDRM" / RCFD–RCON series), so you can stack ten thousand banks into one comparable panel — something free narrative filings cannot give you. This is the raw material of bank-level empirical work: deposits, loans by type, charge-offs, net interest income, capital ratios — every quarter, for the whole banking system, going back decades. The form numbers reflect bank size and foreign offices (031 = with foreign offices, 041 = domestic only, 051 = streamlined for smaller banks). ## Coverage All FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions, filed **quarterly** (as of March 31, June 30, September 30, December 31). The CDR bulk download covers the modern electronic era; historical Call Report data reaches back much further through the **Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago**'s long-running archive and the FFIEC. [CHECK: the earliest quarter available in the CDR bulk "Call Reports — Single Period" download vs. the Chicago Fed historical files.] This is *entity- level* data — one set of figures per bank per quarter — not branch-level and not loan-level. ## Key identifiers The primary key is the **RSSD ID** (often `IDRSSD` in the data files) — the Federal Reserve's permanent, unique identifier for a financial institution in the National Information Center (NIC). It is permanent across name changes and is the join key to other regulatory data (FR Y-9C, NIC attributes, the Fed's structure files). Beware the trap: a bank's RSSD ID is **not** the same as its parent holding company's RSSD ID — relating a subsidiary bank to its holding company is exactly the crosswalk the FR Y-9C card and Chapter 7.4 handle, and it is out of scope here. Individual financial line items are identified by **MDRM codes** — e.g. `RCFD2170` (total assets, consolidated) or `RCON2170` (total assets, domestic offices); the `RCFD`/`RCON` prefix tells you consolidated vs. domestic-only. ## Access path (download / API; no key required) Call Reports are free and need **no API key**. Two paths: ```python import os, io, zipfile, requests, pandas as pd # Path A — FFIEC CDR bulk download (manual or scripted): the "Call Reports -- Single Period" # tab-delimited ZIP for a given quarter, pulled from the CDR Public Data Distribution site. # Save the raw ZIP to data/raw/ and read the period you need. # url = "<FFIEC CDR bulk-download URL for 2024-12-31>" # [CHECK exact CDR endpoint/params] raw = "data/raw/ffiec_call_2024Q4.zip" with zipfile.ZipFile(raw) as z: name = [n for n in z.namelist() if "Schedule RC" in n][0] # pick the schedule you need rc = pd.read_csv(z.open(name), sep="\t", low_memory=False) # Path B — the FFIEC CDR also exposes a SOAP/web-service API for programmatic pulls # (it issues a free access token/credential you read from the environment, never hard-coded): token = os.environ["FFIEC_CDR_TOKEN"] # export FFIEC_CDR_TOKEN=... [CHECK exact auth scheme] ``` For a camp project the **bulk ZIP per quarter** is simpler and entirely sufficient; cache the raw ZIP and read from disk. The SOAP web service exists for automated, large-scale pulls; its exact endpoint and auth are version-dependent, so verify before relying on it. ## License & GMU-infra note (§5) **Free and public** U.S. government regulatory data — **no** GMU-infrastructure restriction. Unlike the WRDS-licensed sources in this appendix, you may pull Call Reports on any machine, cache them, and commit the cached raw files to git. Apply the CONVENTIONS §5 discipline uniformly anyway — **pin the reporting quarter, cache the raw ZIP to `data/raw/`, and log the pull in `logs/pulls.jsonl` with a content hash** — purely for reproducibility, not because a license demands it. If you script the CDR web service, keep its access token in an env var (§5: it is a credential), never in code. ## Gotchas - **MDRM codes drift over time.** Line items are added, retired, and renumbered across years as reporting requirements change; a single MDRM code does not always mean the same thing back through history. Build series from the FFIEC's MDRM dictionary, do not assume code stability. - **RCFD vs. RCON.** Consolidated (`RCFD…`) and domestic-only (`RCON…`) versions of the "same" item differ for banks with foreign offices. Choosing the wrong prefix silently mismeasures large banks. - **Bank ≠ holding company.** Summing subsidiary-bank Call Reports does **not** equal the parent's FR Y-9C; the consolidation rules differ. Do not mix the two levels without the crosswalk. - **Restatements and late filings.** Banks amend filings; a quarter pulled today can differ from the same quarter pulled later. Pin and log the pull date as well as the reporting quarter. - **Mergers create discontinuities.** When banks merge, an RSSD disappears or absorbs another's balances — a jump in a single bank's series is often a merger, not organic growth. ## "First 10 rows" schema sketch — selected items, one quarter (illustrative — not real data) | IDRSSD | RCFD2170 | RCFD2122 | RCON2200 | RIAD4340 | report_date | |-------:|---------:|---------:|---------:|---------:|-------------| | 100001 | 9852341 | 6120448 | 7421005 | 23110 | 2024-12-31 | | 100002 | 41200 | 28055 | 34880 | 290 | 2024-12-31 | | 100003 | 1503882 | 980221 | 1190440 | 4120 | 2024-12-31 | | 100004 | 287990 | 175004 | 230118 | 905 | 2024-12-31 | | 100005 | 65432100 | 40221890 | 49880221 | 188400 | 2024-12-31 | | 100006 | 12044 | 7880 | 9905 | 41 | 2024-12-31 | | 100007 | 880221 | 540118 | 690004 | 2110 | 2024-12-31 | | 100008 | 3201998 | 2010554 | 2540118 | 8800 | 2024-12-31 | | 100009 | 158002 | 99110 | 124880 | 480 | 2024-12-31 | | 100010 | 22118994 | 13880221 | 17004118 | 61200 | 2024-12-31 | (RSSD IDs and dollar amounts in $thousands are fabricated for shape illustration only. `RCFD2170` = total assets, `RCFD2122` = total loans & leases, `RCON2200` = total deposits, `RIAD4340` = net income — code meanings illustrative.) ## Which chapter / lab uses it Catalogued in **Appendix C** as a *free* bank-regulation source. It is the entity-level data layer for any Week-7/Week-8 capstone on **bank regulation, bank risk, deposit behavior, or lending** — a Maya-style (household-finance/fair-lending) or Priya-style (climate-risk-on-bank-balance-sheets) extension — and it pairs naturally with HMDA (lending) and the FR Y-9C (holding-company level). Pull it the §5 way for reproducibility: pin the quarter, cache the raw ZIP, log the hash.