NIC supervisory data: CAMELS ratings and BHC structure (restricted access)

Mixed: structure public, CAMELS ratings confidential

The NIC structure and ownership data is public, but the CAMELS supervisory ratings held alongside it are confidential. This page carries no provenance badge: the ratings have no access path we can run here, and the public structure data was not exercised in this session. CAMELS ratings are reached only through a Federal Reserve, FDIC, or OCC affiliation or an approved restricted-data arrangement, inside a secure environment, with output subject to disclosure review. The page documents what the collection is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

The National Information Center (NIC) is the Federal Reserve’s repository of data on banking organizations. Its structure side is public: the organizational hierarchy, ownership, and history of bank holding companies (formations, mergers, RSSD identifiers, listing history). Held alongside it, CAMELS composite and component supervisory ratings (Capital, Asset quality, Management, Earnings, Liquidity, Sensitivity, on a 1 to 5 scale) are confidential supervisory assessments. A paper we distill uses both: Falato & Scharfstein use confidential CAMELS composite and component ratings as the bank-risk outcome, with NIC ownership and listing history to identify which BHCs are publicly listed.

• Cost: structure data is free and public; CAMELS ratings are not for sale.
• Source: Federal Reserve (the National Information Center).
• Coverage: banking organizations supervised in the U.S.; structure history is broad, CAMELS ratings cover examined institutions over their exam cycle.

Access (restricted)

• Structure data is public. The NIC website exposes institution search, organizational hierarchies, and RSSD identifiers; this is downloadable.
• CAMELS ratings are confidential. Access to supervisory ratings is limited to researchers at the Federal Reserve System, the FDIC, or the OCC, or others granted entry to the restricted data, worked inside a secure environment with output subject to disclosure review.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• CAMELS is assigned on an exam cycle, not continuously. A rating is set at an examination and carried until the next exam; the timestamp that matters is the exam date, not the report date. Do not treat ratings as a smooth monthly or quarterly series.
• Ratings are confidential and their disclosure is restricted. A bank’s CAMELS rating is non-public supervisory information; results using it are disclosure- reviewed and the rating itself cannot be published at the bank level.
• Composite versus component. The composite rating and the six components carry different information; using the composite alone discards component-level signal (and vice versa). Be explicit about which you use.
• Lead-supervisor and charter-type differences. Banks are supervised by the Fed, OCC, FDIC, or state regulators, and rating practices can differ; pooling across supervisors mixes assessment styles. Note the supervisor.
• Linking structure to ratings and to market data. RSSD identifiers must be linked across the BHC hierarchy and to market data (for listed parents); mergers and reorganizations break the link. Verify the crosswalk and the parent-subsidiary mapping.
• Output is disclosure-reviewed and cannot be redistributed. Rating-level results leave the secure environment only after review.

Citation

Cite the source, e.g.: National Information Center (Federal Reserve): structure data, accessed YYYY-MM-DD; CAMELS supervisory ratings, confidential, accessed under restricted-data arrangement. State the rating (composite or component), the exam-date basis, and the sample window.