Three signals of a bank's safety
| Safety signal | What it tells you | Healthy read |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 capital ratio | Size of the loss-absorbing cushion vs. risk-weighted assets | Comfortably above the regulatory minimum |
| Net charge-offs | Loan losses actually realized this period | Low and stable as a share of loans |
| Uninsured deposits | Share of funding that can flee fastest in a panic | Lower is steadier |
The call report and the CAMELS framework
All of these numbers come from one place: the call report, the standardized financial statement every US bank files with regulators each quarter. It covers the insured bank itself — not the broader holding company — which is exactly why it isolates the regulated, deposit-taking institution. Supervisors then grade banks with the CAMELS framework: Capital, Asset quality, Management, Earnings, Liquidity, and Sensitivity to market risk.
Safety figures that change: verify, do not memorize
A note on safety figures that move: federal deposit insurance currently covers about $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category — a statutory number that gets revisited after banking-stress episodes, so verify it at fdic.gov rather than memorizing it. The capital minimums likewise carry bank-specific buffers on top of the published floors. Those floors have a name worth knowing: they are the US implementation of the international Basel III capital framework, which is why analysts say a bank is ‘Basel-compliant’ or ask about its ‘Basel ratios’ — the Tier 1 ratio in the table above is a Basel-defined measure.
Read the Tier 1 leverage cushion yourself
Reading two safety signals that deteriorate together
The 2023 lesson: profitable banks can still fail
A charter record is not a deal record
FDIC structure records track charters, not transactions. When one bank acquires another, the record shows an event -- one charter ended and its deposits and branches continued under another -- with no price, no premium, and no terms attached. Failure records deserve double caution: a failed bank enters Receivership, and the FDIC as receiver typically sells its deposits and sound assets through a purchase-and-assumption agreement arranged over the closing weekend. Those terms are set to protect insured depositors at the least cost to the insurance fund, not to price the franchise, so the assuming bank in a failure record did not pay what the business was worth in an open sale. The same discipline applies to any registry-derived merger record, from charter files to license registries: read structure as structure, and look for the price in deal documents. Our [bank failures directory](/bank-failures/) lists FDIC-recorded failure resolutions -- each row a charter ending, dated and with the assuming bank named, and deliberately without a purchase price, because the source record carries none.
Sit with the ideas.
Why is a bank's Tier 1 capital ratio the first number regulators look at when judging safety?