Before buying a regional bank’s shares, review several quarters of its regulatory filings and assess credit quality, funding and liquidity, capital, securities exposure, and earnings together. Compare the bank with genuinely similar peers, not just industry averages. Public data can reveal important trends, but it cannot disclose every management weakness or supervisory concern—and no single ratio is a buy or sell signal.
Where can you find reliable information about a bank?
Start with the bank’s quarterly Call Reports. FDIC-insured banks and savings associations file them at quarter-end; the reports provide standardized information regulators use to monitor individual institutions and the banking industry. The FDIC also makes the information available to the public through its Bank Financial Reports page.
Use the FDIC’s data downloads and comparison resources to find institution data, peer comparisons, and deposit information. Confirm the bank’s charter, size, business model, and geographic markets before choosing peers. A lender with substantial commercial real estate exposure is not a like-for-like comparison with a bank focused on residential mortgages or consumer lending.
Look at a run of quarters rather than one filing. A trend in loan growth, deposits, credit costs, or margins can be more informative than a favorable or unfavorable reading in isolation. Check the filing period and definitions when comparing figures, and distinguish reported results from your own estimates.
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How healthy is the loan book?
Review both the size and the composition of lending. Call Report schedules include loan balances, credit-loss information, and past-due and nonaccrual loans. The FDIC’s Risk Review discusses credit exposures across sectors, including commercial real estate.
Check concentrations and changes in loan mix
Identify which loan categories make up a large share of the portfolio, whether those shares have changed, and whether growth is concentrated in a particular market or borrower type. A concentration is not by itself evidence of trouble; it tells you where a downturn or a change in underwriting could have an outsized effect.
Track delinquency, losses, and reserves together
Compare past-due and nonaccrual balances with charge-offs and recoveries, the allowance for credit losses, and provisions for credit losses. Ask whether worsening credit indicators are being accompanied by higher provisions and whether the bank’s capital could absorb plausible losses. No one of these measures is conclusive on its own: they describe different parts of credit deterioration and loss absorption.
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Rapid asset growth and concentrated exposures deserve closer scrutiny, not an automatic prediction of failure. The FDIC’s account of bank supervision during the financial crisis notes that Call Report indicators such as concentrations, rapid growth, volatile funding, and lower capital helped identify risk, while also explaining that reports alone do not expose institution-specific practices and governance.
Are deposits stable, and can the bank meet funding needs?
Examine deposit liabilities and their composition over several quarters. Where disclosed, consider uninsured deposits and alternative or wholesale funding, as well as changes in the bank’s cash, securities, and other liquidity sources. Compare possible funding pressure with the resources available to meet withdrawals and other obligations.
The OCC’s Problem Bank Supervision handbook cautions that “Deposit volatility can be a red flag of an emerging problem bank.” It identifies depositor type and relationship duration as relevant considerations. A public investor may not be able to establish how customers would behave in a future stress event; rate sensitivity, geography, and reputation can affect that behavior, but reported balances cannot predict it reliably. The FDIC’s risk review also covers liquidity and funding risks.
The FDIC’s annual Summary of Deposits survey measures branch deposits as of June 30. It can help show a bank’s deposit position in its branch markets, but it is a market-position measure, not a complete measure of deposit stability.
Can capital and securities withstand losses or rate changes?
Review regulatory capital ratios and how they move over time. Interpret them in light of the bank’s loan concentrations, credit quality, and market exposure—not as a stand-alone safety score. The OCC’s capital guidance explains that adequacy depends on the risks in a bank’s activities and the possible adverse effects of credit, market, and other risks.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesAlso examine the securities portfolio and unrealized gains or losses. Interest-rate movements can affect securities values, liquidity, funding costs, and capital resilience. The FDIC’s Risk Review covers these connections; a securities loss figure should be read alongside the portfolio, funding position, and the bank’s wider balance sheet rather than treated as a complete account of its condition.
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Are earnings durable, or do they depend on favorable conditions?
Track net interest income and net interest margin, noninterest income and expenses, provisions for credit losses, and reported returns on assets and equity. Ask what is driving the direction of results. For example, earnings may look stronger when credit provisions are unusually low, while a funding mix that becomes more expensive could put pressure on margins. Separate recurring operations from nonrecurring items where the filings provide enough information to do so.
Industry figures can provide context, but they do not describe a particular bank. The FDIC’s Q1 2026 Quarterly Banking Profile reported the following aggregate figures for FDIC-insured institutions:
| Period and measure | FDIC-reported industry figure | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 2026 return on assets | 1.26% | Industry context for that quarter, not a target-bank result or benchmark that determines whether a stock is attractive. |
| Q1 2026 net income | $80.5 billion | Aggregate net income for insured institutions in that quarter; it does not show how an individual regional bank performed. |
| Full-year 2025 return on assets | 1.20% | FDIC-reported industry result for 2025, not a forecast for a particular bank. |
| Full-year 2025 net income | $295.6 billion | FDIC-reported industry total for 2025. |
| Year-end 2025 problem-bank list | 60 banks; 1.4% of total banks | The FDIC said the count was within the 1–2% range for non-crisis periods. It is an industry supervisory statistic, not a public risk rating for the bank you are considering. |
The last three figures were reported in the FDIC’s Q4 2025 Quarterly Banking Profile, which also said industry unrealized losses remained elevated. These dated aggregate results offer perspective only; do not transfer them to an individual bank.
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How should you compare banks without reducing the decision to one ratio?
The OCC’s CAMELS framework groups bank condition into six dimensions: capital adequacy, asset quality, management, earnings, liquidity, and sensitivity to market risk. Use these as an organizing checklist, not as a public rating. The OCC’s 2026 bulletin describes proposed revisions; it is useful here for the names of the existing components, not evidence that proposed revisions are final.
| Comparison area | What to compare across peers | What it helps you investigate |
|---|---|---|
| Asset quality | Loan mix and concentrations; past-due and nonaccrual trends; charge-offs and recoveries; allowance and provisions. | Whether credit risks or costs are changing relative to the bank’s portfolio and business model. |
| Capital | Reported regulatory capital ratios and their direction over time. | How loss-absorbing resources compare with the risks and growth in the balance sheet. |
| Liquidity and funding | Deposit composition and changes; disclosed uninsured deposits; wholesale funding; available liquidity. | How the bank funds itself and what resources it reports to meet funding needs. |
| Market sensitivity | Securities holdings, unrealized losses, and reported rate sensitivity where available. | How rates may interact with securities values, funding costs, and liquidity. |
| Earnings | Net interest income and margin, other income and expense, provisions, and returns. | Whether profitability trends appear supported by recurring operations and a comparable funding and credit environment. |
| Management | Publicly available disclosures and observable consistency in reported decisions and outcomes. | Useful context, but not a substitute for supervisory findings or a confidential rating. |
Choose peers with similar size, geography, and business mix, then compare direction and composition as well as headline ratios. A difference may reflect a genuine risk distinction or simply a different portfolio; investigate the underlying schedules before drawing a conclusion. Public figures can inform several CAMELS dimensions, but they do not give investors access to confidential supervisory judgments or reveal every management and governance issue.
Quick Recap
What should you do before making a decision?
- Identify the institution. Confirm the bank’s charter, business mix, scale, and markets so you can select relevant peers.
- Build a multi-quarter baseline. Use FDIC Call Report information and comparison resources to follow balance-sheet composition, credit measures, deposits, capital, and earnings through time.
- Investigate the largest risks first. For a concentrated lender, focus on the exposed loan categories; for a bank with shifting deposits or funding, scrutinize liquidity and funding sources; for significant securities exposure, examine the interaction with rates and liquidity.
- Compare the full picture. Review credit, capital, funding, securities, and earnings together, using CAMELS as an organizing lens rather than trying to substitute one ratio for the whole assessment.
- Keep the scope of public data in mind. Call Reports and other public filings cannot show every supervisory finding, management weakness, or institution-specific risk practice. Treat an unexplained change as a reason to investigate, not proof of safety or failure.
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