FDIC Community Banking Research and Reports
The FDIC's community banking research program produces structured empirical analysis of the small and mid-size banks that hold the majority of agricultural loans and small business credit in rural and non-metropolitan markets across the United States. This page covers what the program produces, how its core datasets and reports are constructed, the scenarios in which practitioners and policymakers rely on these materials, and where analytical boundaries determine which institutions and questions fall within scope. Understanding this research output matters because it informs regulatory design, congressional testimony, and competitive analysis within the banking industry.
Definition and scope
Community banking research at the FDIC is a formal, recurring analytical function distinct from routine supervisory data collection. The program's primary output is the FDIC Community Banking Research series, which uses a definition of "community bank" developed internally by FDIC economists and published in peer-reviewed form through the agency's own research division.
The FDIC's working definition relies on a set of criteria rather than a single asset threshold. An institution qualifies as a community bank under the FDIC framework if it exhibits local orientation in lending, deposit-gathering geography, and ownership structure — not merely because total assets fall below $1 billion. This distinction matters operationally: some banks with assets below $1 billion are excluded (for example, those with atypical business models like credit card specialization), while some institutions above that figure qualify. The FDIC published a full methodology in the 2012 FDIC Community Banking Study (FDIC Community Banking Study, December 2012), which established the definitional framework used in subsequent annual updates.
Scope also encompasses geographic segmentation. The research distinguishes between metro and non-metro community banks, a division that carries policy weight because non-metro community banks hold a disproportionate share of agricultural credit — approximately 77 percent of agricultural loans outstanding at community banks, according to the FDIC's own study data (FDIC Community Banking Study, December 2012).
How it works
The research pipeline draws primarily from the FDIC Statistics on Depository Institutions database, which aggregates Call Report data filed quarterly by every FDIC-insured institution. Economists apply the community bank classification criteria to filter the roughly 4,500–5,000 institutions (the count fluctuates with failures, mergers, and new charters) that meet the definition from the full population of insured depositories.
The production process involves four structured steps:
- Data extraction — Raw Call Report submissions are pulled from the FDIC's Statistics on Depository Institutions (SDI), which covers balance sheet, income, and capital metrics at the individual institution level.
- Classification — Each institution is scored against the community bank criteria (business model, geographic footprint, loan portfolio composition), producing a binary flag that carries forward through trend analysis.
- Aggregation and segmentation — Flagged institutions are grouped by asset tier, geography (metro vs. non-metro, census region), and charter type to enable apples-to-apples comparison across time.
- Benchmarking — Community bank financial ratios — net interest margin, return on assets, loan-to-deposit ratio, capital adequacy — are compared against non-community bank peers using the same Call Report universe to isolate structural differences rather than cyclical noise.
Annual updates are published as part of the FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile, which includes a dedicated community bank supplement showing performance relative to non-community institutions. The Quarterly Banking Profile is released approximately three to four weeks after each quarter's Call Report deadline.
Common scenarios
Practitioners draw on FDIC community banking research in three principal contexts:
Regulatory impact analysis. When federal agencies propose rules affecting capital requirements, deposit assessment premiums, or lending standards, FDIC community banking data supplies the baseline for cost-benefit analysis. The FDIC uses internal community bank data, for example, when assessing the burden of capital rule changes proposed under FDIC capital requirements frameworks. The research allows differentiation between impacts on large complex institutions and the smaller depositories that may lack compliance infrastructure.
Competitive and market structure research. Academic economists and Federal Reserve Bank research departments use the FDIC's community bank longitudinal dataset to study consolidation trends. The number of FDIC-insured community banks declined from more than 14,000 in 1985 to approximately 4,600 by 2022 (FDIC 2022 Annual Report), a contraction documented continuously through this research program and referenced in congressional testimony on industry consolidation.
CRA and community development planning. Community Reinvestment Act examinations, overseen in part by the FDIC under FDIC Community Reinvestment Act oversight, use geographic lending data that overlaps significantly with the community banking research database. Banks and community development organizations use the FDIC's publicly available datasets to identify credit gaps in underserved markets.
Decision boundaries
Understanding what falls outside the FDIC community banking research scope prevents misapplication of its outputs.
Excluded institution types. Thrifts, credit unions, and non-bank lenders do not appear in the community banking research series. Credit union data falls under the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), and a comparison of the two frameworks is addressed separately in the FDIC vs. NCUA coverage on this site.
Not supervisory records. The research datasets are derived from public Call Report aggregates, not from examination findings, CAMELS ratings, or confidential supervisory information. For examination-specific frameworks, the FDIC bank ratings CAMELS and FDIC bank examination process pages address those mechanisms. The research series does not substitute for or replicate the FDIC problem bank list.
Temporal coverage limits. The standardized community bank definition was not applied retroactively before 1984 in a consistent form, which constrains long-run time-series comparisons. Historical data prior to that point requires cross-referencing with the FDIC historical bank data archive and acknowledgment of definitional discontinuities.
Geographic aggregation vs. institution-level data. The published research reports aggregate to state, regional, and national levels. Institution-level lookup requires direct use of the SDI tool or FDIC Bank Find tool. Researchers needing granular institution data cannot substitute published reports for raw database queries.
The FDIC community banking research program's value to the broader landscape of federal banking oversight is covered in the context of the agency's full analytical infrastructure on the site index.