General Workflow

Using {ffiec}

This package attempts to offer a convenient interface to interact with the Central Data Repository ‘REST API’ service made available by the United States Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (‘FFIEC’).

Getting Started

If you haven’t done so already, install {ffiec} and create an account through the FFIEC’s Web Service portal using the instructions in the README section.

With your username and password from the FFIEC’s Web Service portal in-hand (either stored as environment variables or ready to be passed as function arguments), load the package using library().

library(ffiec)

While the package offers several functions to enable different workflows and analyses, one general workflow is as follows:

• Collect a list of available Call reporting periods
• For each desired Call reporting period and desired Institution ID, retrieve Call report data

First, to obtain the available Call reporting periods, use the get_reporting_periods() function. The as_data_frame argument is set to TRUE to alter the return behavior of the function. By default, the function will return a list object.

reporting_periods <- get_reporting_periods(as_data_frame = TRUE)

Next, filter the get_reporting_periods() return value to the period(s) of interest. For the purposes of this example, the four reporting periods in calendar year 2025 will be used.

reports_2025 <- reporting_periods |>
  dplyr::filter(
    ReportingPeriod <= as.Date("2025-12-31"),
    ReportingPeriod >= as.Date("2025-01-01")
  ) |>
  dplyr::pull()

Using the get_facsimile() function, Call report data can be collected for the selected reporting periods and one or more specified institutions.

call_df <- get_facsimile(
  reporting_period_end_date = reports_2025,
  fi_id = c(480228, 451965)
)

Notice that each institution ID (column BankRSSDIdentifier) contains Call report data for each reporting period.

call_df |>
  dplyr::count(CallDate, BankRSSDIdentifier)

This example can be extended by comparing Call report values, either between periods or between institutions (or both). Below, the Call report data is filtered to display Tier 1 capital for each institution over the selected reporting periods.

call_df |>
  dplyr::filter(MDRM == "RCFA8274") |>  # Tier 1 capital
  dplyr::mutate(Value = as.numeric(Value))

Additional Uses

The package offers functions to interact with both Call report data and Uniform Bank Performance Report (UBPR) data.

To interact with the latter, simply substitute get_ubpr_reporting_periods() and get_ubpr_facsimile() into the above examples. However, please be aware that get_ubpr_facsimile() returns different column names than get_facsimile().