FFIEC Annual Report 1999

working groups are organized as
needed to handle accounting, reporting,
instructional, and processing
matters of a specialized or technical
nature.
Activities of the Task Force
During 1999, the task force’s principal
activities involved the Reports
of Condition and Income (Call
Report) filed quarterly by insured
commercial banks and FDICsupervised
savings banks. Its work
included further steps to fulfill the
requirements of section 307 of the
Riegle Community Development
and Regulatory Improvement Act
of 1994 (the Riegle Act) as they
relate to bank regulatory reporting
requirements. The task force also
addressed the quarterly regulatory
report for U.S. branches and agencies
of foreign banks and the Country
Exposure Report.
In March 1999, the U.S. Office of
Management and Budget (OMB)
approved the implementation of a
limited number of revisions to
bank regulatory reporting requirements
that took effect in that
quarter’s Call Report (Forms FFIEC
031, 032, 033, and 034). Banks had
been notified about these changes
in a January 21, 1999, letter from
the Council after the task force had
approved the revisions under its
delegated authority. The principal
changes were the deletion of outdated
items pertaining to high-risk
mortgage securities, the addition
of new items for accumulated
net gains or losses on cash flow
hedges, and a revision in the
reporting of nonmortgage servicing
assets in the items for intangible
assets. Instructional revisions also
taking effect as of March 31, 1999,
incorporated recent changes
in accounting standards and
other modifications to further
conform the Call Report with
generally accepted accounting
principles.
The OMB also approved corresponding
reporting and instruc-
16
tional revisions to the Report of
Assets and Liabilities of U.S.
Branches and Agencies of Foreign
Banks (Form FFIEC 002) in March
1999. As part of their first quarter
1999 reporting materials, U.S.
branches and agencies received a
revised instruction book for this
report. The task force also arranged
to make this instruction book
available on the Internet after its
revision and reissuance in March
1999.
To supplement the Call Report’s
fields for each bank’s physical
address, the task force added a field
for the bank’s Internet home page
address, if any, effective with the
report for June 30, 1999. Through
year-end 1999, these home page
addresses have not been included in
the Call Report information that is
disclosed to the public. In the interagency
letter accompanying the
December 31, 1999, Call Report
materials, the three banking agencies
advised banks that home page
addresses would become publicly
available beginning with the first
quarter of 2000 reports. In August
1999, the task force agreed that no
revisions to the Call Report requirements
should be proposed for
implementation in March 2000. In
reaching this decision, the task force
determined that banks should not
have to divert their attention and
systems resources from Year 2000
initiatives in order to plan for first
quarter 2000 regulatory reporting
changes. The Council and the agencies
advised banks that no new
items would be added to the Call
Report for that quarter in the interagency
letters accompanying the
September 30 and December 31,
1999, Call Report materials.
The task force prepared a Call
Report instruction book update that
the banking agencies distributed to
each bank as part of its Call Report
materials for September 30, 1999.
The updated instructions are also
available on the Internet. The principal
changes in this limited update
included conforming the instructions
for reporting extensions of
credit to insiders with definitional
revisions that had been made to
Federal Reserve Regulation O and
updating the Glossary entry on loan
impairment for recent guidance
issued by the Financial Accounting
Standards Board. In addition, banks
received a revised index to their
instruction book.
In 1999, the task force continued to
build on the efforts of the Council
and the banking and thrift agencies
over the previous four years to
implement the provisions of section
307 of the Riegle Act. Section 307 in
part directs the banking agencies to
review the information they collect
in the Call Report and eliminate
reporting requirements that are no
longer warranted for safety and
soundness or other public purposes.
The task force’s reviews of existing
reporting requirements have, in
recent years, resulted in the elimination
of numerous items and reductions
of detail in several areas of the
Call Report. As 1999 began, the task
force was concluding a comprehensive
review of the uses of individual
Call Report items after surveying
the various user groups
within the agencies and state banking
authorities.
In March, the task force discussed
its findings with the Council, which
directed the task force to explore
ways of reducing reporting burden
while balancing the agencies’ supervisory
and other information needs
regarding these users. During the
second and third quarters, the task
force considered the information it
had gained about the uses of the
Call Report items, statistical data on
individual items, and comments
about reporting burden previously
received from bankers. After weighing
these factors, the task force
developed an extensive proposal
for improving the relevance of the
information that the agencies currently
collect from banks by streamlining
their regulatory reports. The
task force then consulted with the
agencies’ users concerning the merits
of the proposal during the fourth
quarter of 1999 and also sought