What is a charter number?

A charter number is a unique identifier assigned to a national bank by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the United States. The OCC is a regulatory agency that supervises and regulates national banks and federal savings associations.

Charter numbers are used to track and identify individual banks in the OCC's database. They help differentiate one bank from another and provide a way to access information specific to each bank. Each national bank in the U.S. is assigned a unique charter number upon receiving a national bank charter from the OCC.

The charter number includes both a prefix and a number. The prefix indicates the type of institution, such as "N" for national bank or "SB" for savings bank. The number following the prefix is a digit sequence assigned sequentially, starting from 1.

Charter numbers can be useful for various purposes, including accessing regulatory information, financial data, and historical records of a specific national bank. These numbers can be found on banking-related documents or by searching the OCC's online database.

It's important to note that charter numbers are specific to national banks in the U.S. and may not apply to other types of financial institutions or banks in different countries.