Banks publish more about themselves than any other private business you will ever sell to, and most reps never open it. Knowing how to research banking companies for sales means knowing that every insured bank files a quarterly call report, that the FFIEC turns it into a peer-ranked performance report, and that both are free. Those two documents tell you the asset size, the loan mix, the deposit cost, the efficiency ratio, and whether the bank is growing or shrinking, all before you read a word of marketing. Layer on the holding-company structure, the regulator, and any public enforcement action and you know who will be in the room and what they are worried about. The checklist below is that reading order. The prompt under it does the reading and labels what it could confirm against a filing versus what it guessed from the site.
What is different about selling into Banking
Banks buy on the calendar year, set budgets in the fourth quarter, and route anything that touches customer data or a core system through third-party risk management: financial review, SOC 2, an information security questionnaire, and a contract the examiners can read at the next exam. A community bank under $2 billion in assets has a CEO who signs, a CIO who may also run facilities, and a board that approves large contracts. A regional bank has committees. Anything near the $10 billion threshold is preparing for CFPB supervision and Durbin interchange caps, which changes every priority for two years. Quoting the holding company's numbers to the bank, or sizing the bank wrong, ends credibility on the spot. A $900 million bank pitched like a money-center bank hears every sentence as proof you have never sold to one.
How to research banking companies for sales: the checklist
Pull the numbers first, then the structure, then the people. The call report and UBPR take five minutes and settle most of the questions; the rest of the checklist tells you what to do with them.
You are researching {{company}} ({{company URL}}), a bank or bank holding company, so I can sell {{our product}} to them. Read their website, their investor relations pages and 10-K if public, and their careers and news pages.
Produce a one-page brief:
1. Structure: holding company, bank subsidiaries, charter type, primary regulator, and headquarters state.
2. Size and shape: total assets, deposit and loan mix, number of branches, and growth by acquisition versus organic.
3. Pressure: anything on efficiency, deposit costs, credit quality, capital, or an enforcement action.
4. Technology and change: core provider and digital-banking vendors named anywhere, conversions underway, and new executives in technology, digital, retail, lending, or compliance.
5. Likely buyer for {{our product}} and the third-party-risk or board step that will slow the deal.
Tag every line Confirmed (cite the page or filing) or Inferred (state the reasoning). Where the site does not say, write 'Not stated' and point me to the call report or UBPR field that would. Close with three questions to ask on the first call.- The most recent call report and UBPR (Uniform Bank Performance Report) via the FFIEC: total assets, loan mix, deposit composition, cost of funds, and efficiency ratio, each ranked against a peer group.
- The holding-company structure on the FFIEC National Information Center: which bank charters and non-bank subsidiaries sit under the parent, and which regulator each one answers to.
- The 10-K and proxy statement for a public holding company: the 'Competition' and 'Supervision and Regulation' sections name the pressures, and the proxy names who runs what.
- Public enforcement actions from the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, and CFPB: a consent order is a funded compliance program with deadlines.
- The careers page filtered to technology, digital banking, and operations: job posts naming Jack Henry, Fiserv, FIS, Q2, or Alkami describe the core and digital stack without a discovery call.
- An efficiency ratio drifting above the peer group for several quarters: expense scrutiny that funds automation and kills everything without a cost line.
- Total assets approaching $10 billion: two years of preparing for CFPB supervision, Durbin, and stress-test expectations, with budget reallocated to risk and compliance.
- A pending merger application or a completed acquisition: a core conversion, duplicate vendors, and a decision about which stack survives.
- A BSA/AML or consumer-compliance consent order: mandated spend, a named remediation timeline, and a Chief Compliance Officer with authority to buy.
- Branch closures in the FDIC Summary of Deposits data alongside digital-banking hires: a deliberate shift of service and sales to digital channels.
- What is the charter and who is the primary regulator: national bank (OCC), state member (Federal Reserve), state nonmember (FDIC), or a credit union (NCUA), which is a different buyer altogether?
- What is the asset size band, and is it growing organically, by acquisition, or not at all?
- What does the balance sheet lean on: commercial real estate, C&I lending, mortgages, consumer, or deposits gathered from a specific niche?
- Which core banking provider are they on, and when does that contract renew?
- Who owns the budget for what I sell: the CIO, the Chief Retail or Digital Officer, the Chief Lending Officer, the Chief Compliance Officer, or, at a small bank, the CEO?
- FDIC BankFind Suite: institution profiles, branch locations, history, and financial summaries for every insured bank.
- FFIEC Central Data Repository: quarterly call reports and the UBPR peer-comparison report, both free.
- FFIEC National Information Center (NIC): holding-company organization charts and FR Y-9C filings for bank holding companies.
- SEC EDGAR for public holding companies, and the OCC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, and CFPB enforcement-action databases for orders and penalties.
Pull the UBPR before the website; a bank's marketing describes its aspirations, its peer ratios describe its budget.
Run the research on a real account
A checklist for every bank is a checklist for none of them, because a $600 million community bank and a $40 billion regional share a regulator and almost nothing else. Let Claude do the sorting. Paste the checklist and the prompt with the bank's URL and it comes back ranked for this account, with the numbers it confirmed separated from the ones it guessed.
I sell {{our product}} to {{buyer persona}} at banks. I am researching {{company}} ({{company URL}}).
Read their site and anything public you can reach and tell me first: the asset size band, charter type, primary regulator, and whether this is a holding company or a single bank.
Then rewrite the research checklist below for this account. Remove items that do not apply at this size or charter, reorder the rest by relevance to a {{our product}} conversation, and for each signal item state whether you saw it, did not see it, or could not check from public pages.
Name the person most likely to own the budget for {{our product}} at a bank this size, and the third-party-risk or board-approval step that will slow the deal. Mark everything Confirmed or Inferred.
CHECKLIST:
{{paste the checklist above}}Research any account with Claude
- Account brief skill →The Claude skill that turns a company URL into a source-grounded first-call brief, plus the account plan template.
- 90-second account brief prompt →The copy-paste prompt version for one account, right now.
- Account brief from a URL, the use case →The full play, with the tool chain that researches every account on the list before the first call.
Frequently asked questions
How do you research banking companies for sales?
Pull the call report and UBPR from the FFIEC before you open the bank's website. They give you total assets, loan and deposit mix, cost of funds, and efficiency ratio ranked against peers, which is more than most first calls uncover. Then check the holding-company structure on the FFIEC NIC, search the regulators' enforcement databases for open orders, and read the careers page for the core and digital vendors. Fifteen minutes with those four sources produces a brief a bank executive will recognize as accurate.
Why does a bank's asset size change how you sell to it?
Because the buyer, the process, and the priorities all change with it. Under about $1 billion, the CEO and a small executive team decide, the board approves large contracts, and one person often wears the CIO and operations hats. Between $1 billion and $10 billion, committees and a formal third-party risk program appear. Near $10 billion, the bank is preparing for CFPB supervision and interchange caps and reallocates budget to risk. Above that, procurement and enterprise architecture own the process. Pitch the same way to all four and you will be right once.
Is a credit union researched the same way as a bank?
Mostly, with different sources. Credit unions file quarterly call reports with the NCUA, which publishes them in its own research portal, and they answer to the NCUA rather than the OCC, FDIC, or Federal Reserve. They are member-owned nonprofits with volunteer boards, so 'shareholder' language misses and 'member' language lands. Their fields of membership, listed in the NCUA data, tell you who they serve. Otherwise the shape is the same: asset size, loan mix, core provider, and who owns the budget.