Diversified Banks Data Provider · Head-to-head
FDIC Bank Data Guide vs World Bank Indicators — Bank Capital to Assets Ratio (sample series)
Which diversified banks data provider data fits your job: FDIC Bank Data Guide, or World Bank Indicators — Bank Capital to Assets Ratio. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
FDIC Bank Data Guide
World Bank Indicators — Bank Capital to Assets Ratio (sample series)
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| FDIC Bank Data Guide | World Bank Indicators — Bank Capital to Assets Ratio | |
|---|---|---|
| Entity key | `CERT` plus `NAME` - FDIC certificate number issued at insurance grant, stable through mergers and renames | `countryiso3code` plus `Country Name` - ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 economy code |
| Observation period | `REPDTE` - quarter-end report date in yyyymmdd form | `date` - observation year (or one `<year>` column per year in the wide layout) |
| Numeric measure | `ASSET`, `DEP`, `EQ`, `NETINC`, `ROA` - many typed dollar-scale columns per institution, in thousands of dollars | `value` - one percent reading per economy-year, unrounded as published |
| Classification and status | `BKCLASS` charter class, `ACTIVE` open/closed flag, `STALP` state | `Indicator Name` and `Indicator Code`, identical across every economy |
| Self-documentation | Quick Reference Table mapping each product family to its source regulatory reports | `SOURCE_NOTE` and `SOURCE_ORGANIZATION` metadata - 'Financial Soundness Indicators, International Monetary Fund (IMF)' |
| Capital concept | `EQ` - equity capital per institution (preferred and common stock, surplus, undivided profits) | Published ratio of Tier 1 capital to total assets, system level |
What each does better
the FDIC Bank Data Guide
Institutional texture nobody else carries. One certificate threads through every family: registry rows, geocoded branch points with service-type codes, quarterly financials, and the Events and Changes record whose FAILDATE populates for failed institutions - roughly 4,115 recorded failures reaching back to 1934. Failure archaeology, merger genealogy and cycle studies all start from that spine.
Peer-shaped benchmarking. Peer Group Comparisons put an institution's ratios against true asset-size comparables rather than the whole industry, and the Quick Reference Table traces every column back to the regulatory filing it descends from - see call reports for the quarterly filings underneath.
Deposits down to the branch. Summary of Deposits rolls to branch, county or MSA, which is how you learn who owns the checking account in a given zip code. A country-year panel structurally cannot answer a question that names one bank on one street corner.
the World Bank capital-to-assets series
Comparability across roughly 265 economies and sixty-plus years. Every economy is measured with the same definition - IMF Financial Soundness Indicator methodology, Tier 1 to total assets - so a cross-country ranking needs no harmonization work. The annual line from 1960 spans Bretton Woods' collapse, the Latin American debt crisis, Japan's bubble, the global financial crisis and the post-pandemic balance-sheet expansion in one continuous series; see capital adequacy ratio.
Aggregates included. Regional and income groupings ride alongside national economies, so a global average is a filter rather than a merge.
Siblings in identical shape. Around 30 banking indicators - nonperforming loans to gross loans, domestic credit to the private sector, bank liquid reserves to assets among them - share the same eight-column layout, so widening a feature set is a rename, not a remapping. Blanks stay honestly blank instead of zero-filled, which matters more the longer the series runs.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - let the unit of analysis decide. If your question names an institution or a place inside the United States - this certificate, this metro's deposit share, this failure cohort - FDIC Bank Data Guide is the instrument shaped for it. If your question names a country or a decade - pricing host-market risk before an entry, screening banking-system fragility, building a cross-country feature set - World Bank Indicators — Bank Capital to Assets Ratio (sample series) answers it directly.
Neither wins on quality; both carry 8/10 in a slice whose eleven primaries span 6 through 10. In this industry's persona profiles, quant desks pair the annual series for cross-country screens with the guide for diligence navigation - start from investors and quants or data scientists to see the split in full.
Sample both, pick by fit. See FDIC Bank Data Guide · See World Bank Indicators — Bank Capital to Assets Ratio
Fair questions
Is the FDIC Bank Data Guide better than the World Bank capital-to-assets series?
Different instruments, tied on craft - both score 8/10. The guide wins whenever the question names a US institution: about 4,700 active insured banks, branch locations, quarterly financials and failures back to 1934 across six families. The World Bank series wins whenever the question crosses a border: one capital-adequacy ratio, one definition, roughly 265 economies annually since 1960. Many teams keep both.
Which dataset reaches further back in time?
It depends on the axis. The FDIC's Events and Changes family records failures back to 1934 - nearly a century of structural history - while its financial panel runs on quarterly report dates. The World Bank series begins in 1960 and delivers one clean annual observation per economy, with recent values through 2023-2025. Deepest institutional history sits on one side, longest consistent global line on the other.
Do the two datasets overlap anywhere?
On capital, deliberately. The FDIC families expose equity capital and total assets per institution, so a US system-level capital ratio can be constructed bottom-up; the World Bank publishes the system-level ratio directly, defined as Tier 1 capital to total assets. Aggregate the first and you hold a rough cross-check on the second - close, but never identical, because total equity and Basel-defined Tier 1 are different rulers.
Which one should a market-entry analyst sample first?
Start with the World Bank series if the question is which countries: host-market soundness reads straight off the annual line, with regional and income aggregates sitting alongside. Add the FDIC guide once the United States becomes one of the markets under study - it supplies the institution-level texture a country-year cell cannot carry: who operates where, how capitalized, what failed when.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Either record arrives alone or merged onto one delivery calendar, aligned on period and units so the join is done before it reaches you - delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Name the institutions, economies and windows when you request the sample and it lands pre-cut, with field definitions and coverage profiles attached.