Small Banks To Report Less Data

By Trevor Thomas

January 30, 2009 at 07:00 PM

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A community bank revenue measure is set to disappear.

Federal regulators have announced that they no longer will require banks with assets under $1 billion to respond to one call report question that asks about income coming from the sale and servicing of mutual funds and annuities.

Banks of all sizes have been reporting the figures in their call reports.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. recently said in the Federal Register that it will change the reporting rules for smaller banks March 31.

Under new reporting rules, the agencies will require more data from banks on a number of activities that the agencies say carry high risk, such as lending.

The agencies would no longer require fund and annuity income data from smaller banks, because providing the information would be a burden to the banks and of little help to regulators, officials write in the Federal Register notice.

Among those objecting to the change was Michael White, head of Michael White Associates, Radnor, Pa. a firm that uses call reports to generate reports on banks' fee income.

"If the [bank regulatory] agencies eliminate reporting of mutual fund and annuity income among banks with assets less than $1 billion, we will lose our sole window into community banks' mutual fund and annuity activities," White wrote in a comment letter submitted in November 2008.

A copy of the Federal Register notice is available here.

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