Thrift Version of Call Report to Get a 40% Trim

WASHINGTON - The Office of Thrift Supervision plans to cut by 40% the financial information savings institutions have to report each quarter.

Under a proposal published in Thursday's Federal Register, the quarterly Thrift Financial Report - the thrift equivalent of banks' call report - will shrink to 493 lines from the current 818.

Gone will be separate reports on thrifts' subsidiaries and questions about Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. guarantees. Many questions about investments, commitments, capital accounts, and other matters will be trimmed down and consolidated.

The proposed changes will make the data gathered on thrifts more comparable to the information gathered in the commercial bank call report. They are slated to go into effect with the June 1996 reporting cycle.

Before 1993, the thrifts had to file the financial reports monthly. This year the agency considered changing the requirement to twice a year, but decided "that for reasons of safety and soundness it cannot further reduce the reporting cycle," according to the Federal Register proposal.

The thrift regulator also contemplated letting small thrifts fill out a simpler report, but decided that the activities of institutions, not their size, should determine what information they must provide. Thrifts do not have to fill out sections of the financial report dealing with activities they don't engage in.

The OTS estimates that filling out the new Thrift Financial Report will take 116.4 hours of the average thrift's time each year, down from 156.4 hours for the current report. The agency will accept comments on its proposal until Oct. 23.