The Supervisory Compass

A measurement record of U.S. bank supervision

The Supervisory Compass

Data on what the federal banking agencies examine, write, and enforce — from the National Banking Acts to the present.

Fed — Cincinnati Fed — Pittsburgh Fed — Baltimore Fed — Charlotte Fed — Birmingham Fed — Jacksonville Fed — Miami Fed — Nashville Fed — New Orleans Fed — Detroit Fed — Little Rock Fed — Louisville Fed — Memphis Fed — Helena Fed — Denver Fed — Oklahoma City Fed — Omaha Fed — El Paso Fed — Houston Fed — San Antonio Fed — Los Angeles Fed — Portland Fed — Salt Lake City Fed — Seattle FDIC — Albany, GA FDIC — Columbia, SC FDIC — Richmond FDIC — Deerfield Beach FDIC — Montgomery FDIC — Scott Depot FDIC — Tampa FDIC — Charlotte FDIC — Raleigh FDIC — Birmingham FDIC — Lexington, MA FDIC — Windsor, CT FDIC — Braintree FDIC — Bedford, NH FDIC — Appleton FDIC — Columbus FDIC — Indianapolis FDIC — Madison FDIC — Princeton, IL FDIC — Champaign FDIC — Wixom (Detroit) FDIC — Lexington, KY FDIC — Brookfield (Milwaukee) FDIC — Springfield, IL FDIC — Downers Grove (Chicago) FDIC — Eau Claire FDIC — Louisville FDIC — Mount Vernon, IL FDIC — Albuquerque FDIC — Dallas (field) FDIC — Jackson, MS FDIC — Lubbock FDIC — Shreveport FDIC — Austin FDIC — Denver FDIC — Knoxville FDIC — Nashville FDIC — Baton Rouge FDIC — Houston FDIC — Little Rock FDIC — Oklahoma City FDIC — Cedar Rapids FDIC — Fargo FDIC — Kansas City (field) FDIC — Omaha FDIC — Springfield, MO FDIC — Columbia, MO FDIC — Grand Island FDIC — Mankato FDIC — Sioux City FDIC — Chesterfield (St. Louis) FDIC — West Des Moines FDIC — Hays FDIC — Golden Valley (Minneapolis) FDIC — Sioux Falls FDIC — Wichita FDIC — Catonsville (Baltimore) FDIC — Monroe, NJ FDIC — Talleyville, DE FDIC — New York (field) FDIC — Syracuse FDIC — Harrisburg FDIC — Blue Bell (Philadelphia) FDIC — Seven Fields (Pittsburgh) FDIC — Billings FDIC — Mesa (Phoenix) FDIC — Salt Lake City FDIC — Pasadena (Los Angeles) FDIC — Portland FDIC — San Francisco (field) FDIC — Mission Viejo FDIC — Roseville (Sacramento) FDIC — Seattle OCC — Alexandria, MN OCC — Atlanta, GA OCC — Billings, MT OCC — Birmingham, AL OCC — Boston, MA OCC — Charlotte, NC OCC — Chicago, IL OCC — Downers Grove, IL OCC — Blue Ash, OH OCC — Cleveland, OH OCC — Dublin, OH OCC — Dallas, TX OCC — Irving, TX OCC — Denver, CO OCC — Edison, NJ OCC — Fargo, ND OCC — Houston, TX OCC — Indianapolis, IN OCC — Overland Park, KS OCC — Little Rock, AR OCC — Longview, TX OCC — Glendale, CA OCC — Louisville, KY OCC — Lubbock, TX OCC — Miami, FL OCC — Wauwatosa, WI OCC — Minneapolis, MN OCC — Brentwood, TN OCC — Metairie, LA OCC — New York, NY OCC — Oklahoma City, OK OCC — Omaha, NE OCC — Peoria, IL OCC — Trevose, PA OCC — Monroeville, PA OCC — Roanoke, VA OCC — San Antonio, TX OCC — Carlsbad, CA OCC — San Francisco, CA OCC — Santa Ana, CA OCC — Seattle, WA OCC — Sioux Falls, SD OCC — St. Louis, MO OCC — East Syracuse, NY OCC — Tampa, FL OCC — Tulsa, OK OCC — Wichita, KS Fed — Boston Fed — New York Fed — Philadelphia Fed — Cleveland Fed — Richmond Fed — Atlanta Fed — Chicago Fed — St. Louis Fed — Minneapolis Fed — Kansas City Fed — Dallas Fed — San Francisco FDIC — New York FDIC — Boston FDIC — Atlanta FDIC — Chicago FDIC — Kansas City FDIC — Dallas FDIC — San Francisco Fed — Washington, D.C. FDIC — Washington, D.C. OCC — Washington, D.C. Boston New York Philadelphia Cleveland Richmond Washington Atlanta Chicago St. Louis Minneapolis Kansas City Dallas San Francisco

Hover an office for detail. Select an agency to isolate its network.

Offices of the three federal banking agencies. Large markers are Reserve Banks and regional offices; small markers are branches and field offices; squares mark the three Washington headquarters. Six cities host more than one agency. The FDIC's San Juan field office is not shown.

Three federal agencies supervise American banks: the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (1863), the Federal Reserve (1913), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1933). Each leaves a long written record — annual reports, examination handbooks, guidance letters, risk assessments, enforcement orders. Most of what we know about that record comes from the accounts of the people who made it. Those accounts are indispensable, but they cannot be checked at scale, because no one had read the record at scale.

This project reads it. We convert the supervisory record into measurement — structured series of examination emphasis, industry structure, and bank-level risk that can be compared across agencies and across 160 years — so that claims about what supervisors did, and when, can be tested against the evidence rather than taken on authority. The aim is a common, independent factual basis for the people who study, practice, and set bank supervision: a record open to scrutiny.

Data

Supervisory Priorities Index

Annual measure of examination emphasis across risk domains, by agency, 1863–present. Built from 44 million words of agency publications.

Supervisory Alignment Index

How much of a bank's supervisor's attention falls on that bank's vulnerabilities — quarterly, for every insured bank.

Chartering & Structure

Entry, exit, charter flipping, and the division of banking assets across the three federal supervisors.

Attention Monitor

What the agencies are writing about now: quarterly topic emphasis in guidance letters, bulletins, and risk reports since 1989.

Briefs

Each quarter we publish a short brief on the state of bank supervision: what moved, what diverged across agencies, and how current emphasis compares with the historical record. Read the current brief.

Research

The measurement behind the site is developed in academic work on the history and political economy of bank supervision.