Summary of Deposits

Summary of Deposits (SOD) lists every branch and the deposits booked at that branch for FDIC insured institutions. See 12 CFR 304.3(c). Each institution reports on 30 June of each year.

SOD is widely used in economic research. Eg Bouwman and Malmendier Am Econ Rev 105 (2015) pp 321–25. It is also used in the preliminary screens for bank merger competitive reviews. Department of Justice Bank merger competitive review (2005).

Variables

The FDIC merges SOD with RIS (Research Information System), which contains information from call reports. Many of these variables are not especially important. This section covers only the most important variables.

The following variables identify the branch.

• YEAR is the reporting year
• CERT identifies the institution on its FDIC certificate number
• BRNUM is a serial count of the branch in that year; this is valid only within the same CERT-YEAR
• UNINUMBR is a supposedly consistent identifier assigned to a branch location which does not change even if the branch is sold
• NAMEFULL is the bank's name of the branch
• ADRESSBR is the branch address
• CITYBR is the branch city
• STALPBR is the branch state
• ZIPBR is the branch ZIP code

The following variables describe the branch.

• DEPSUMBR is the deposits the bank reports at that branch; do not confuse this with DEPDOM, which is the bank's total deposits!
• STCNTYBR is the FIPS code in which the branch is located
• BRSERTYP is the branch service type; the 2023 instructions show the following service levels on pp 34–35 with a fuller explanation:

BRSERTYP	Service	Short description	Included?
11	Full service	Brick and mortar office	Deposits
12	Full service	Retail office	Deposits
13	Full service	Home banking	Deposits
22	Limited service	Military facility
23	Limited service	Drive‐through/facility office
29	Limited service	Mobile/seasonal office
21	Limited service	Administrative office
30	Limited service	Trust office
24	Limited service	Loan production office	No
25	Limited service	Consumer Credit office	No
26	Limited service	Contractual office	No
27	Limited service	Messenger office	No
28	Limited service	Retail office (ATM?)	No

• BKMO identifies if the branch is the bank's main office

The FDIC has already geocoded many of these branches and provide two variables: SIMS_LATITUDE and SIMS_LONGITUDE. The quality of that geocode is not always entirely acceptable. Especially in earlier data, coordinates are approximate: assigned to the centre of counties, states, or sometimes to 0, 0, Null Island, in the Atlantic off the African coast. There are also variables identifying the CSA (Combined Statistical Area) and MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) of the branch.

There is no known interlink between branches in SOD and branches in the Federal Reserve's National Information Center.

DEPSUMBR

There is no guarantee that DEPSUMBR is at all accurate. This implied in the SOD instructions (2023 instructions, p 3): "Institutions should assign deposits to each office in a manner consistent with their existing internal record‐keeping practices". Banks need not book a customer's deposits at a branch at all proximate to the customer's location provided it is consistent with their own records.

Nor is it clear how certain classes of customers ought to be treated. Many corporate and brokered deposits are booked at the main office or at virtual branches (branches with no or little real world analogue) which are used mainly to separate those corporate or brokered deposits from the main deposit franchise. In 1995, for example, around 75 per cent of banks booked a majority of deposits at their main office (BKMO).

Along with the expansion of online banking – noted at 89 FR 6607 – which removes the need for branches in deposit collection entirely, DEPSUMBR accuracy may be in further decline.

Author

Kevin Wong

The views expressed (if there is any such expression at all) herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Department of the Treasury, or the United States.