Bank Tracker Database Launched by American University

The American University School of Communication in partnership with MSNBC has posted a database of information on banks. You should be able to find detailed information on your bank and a “troubled asset ratio” explained below.

From the website  Bank Tracker – Investigative Reporting Workshop

Each quarter the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. requires every bank in the nation to submit detailed reports about its financial condition. This data is public and contains hundreds of data points for each bank. The Investigative Reporting Workshop downloads the data files from the FDIC Web site. Using experienced computer-assisted journalists, we extract several key variables of bank performance.

These include:
*    Total Assets
*    Total Deposits
*    Loans (net of allowance for loan losses)
*    Net Income
*    Provision for loan losses (the charge to earnings for realized loan losses)
*    Tier 1 Capital
*    Loan Loss Reserves (the allowance for loan losses)
*    Loans that are 90 days or more past due (minus the amount of these loans guaranteed by the federal government)
*    Loans that are in nonaccrual status (minus the amount of these loans guaranteed by the federal government). Nonaccrual means the bank can no longer claim interest income from the loan.
*    Other real estate owned (primarily property the bank has acquired through foreclosures)

Using these variables, we calculated a “troubled asset ratio,” which compares the sum of troubled assets with the sum of Tier 1 Capital plus Loan Loss Reserves. Generally speaking, higher values in this ratio indicate that a bank is under more stress caused by loans that are not paying as scheduled.