By Erik Sonne

Do you need detailed financial information on banks or similar institutions? Try out Bank Focus (formerly known as Bankscope).
The database offers detailed, standardized reports and ratios for in excess of 44,000 banks across the world (28,000 US and 16,000 non-US). The information is sourced by Bureau van Dijk, which is now part of Moody’s Analytics.

Contents:
With Bank Focus you get access to:

  • Detailed, consolidated and/or unconsolidated balance sheets and income statements
  • Company ratings and reports
  • Ownership information
  • Stock data
  • Monthly report on banking deals (M&A)

You can search the database using hundreds of different criteria, and you can create benchmarking analyses comparing one bank against its peers.
Coverage:
For US banks you will have access to up to 20 years of financial data, and for non-US banks up to 7 years for listed banks and 3 years for unlisted banks.
Access:
You can access Bank Focus through the following two databases:

Bank Focus
A database with a more traditional configuration and user-friendly interface. From this database you can export data to Excel.

WRDS
Bank Focus is also part of the WRDS portfolio of resources and databases. WRDS provides researchers worldwide with instant access to financial, economic, and marketing data through a uniform, web-based interface.
From WRDS you can export data to a wide selection of output formats, including text and Excel as well as statistical software formats such as SAS, STATA, SPSS, and R


For any questions regarding Banc Focus, please contact Erik Sonne